There and Back Again: A Khitan's Tale - AARnon (2024)

Chapter 1: The Life of Dashi

Chapter Text

The Year of Our Lord 1132, in the cold depths of winter. Much of interest happens in the European world and its surrounds; in Iberia and North Africa, the Almoravid dynasty has solidified its power and threatens Christianity’s position in the peninsula. In England Henry de Normandie is an old man at 64 years of age, without legitimate male issue; England is poised to be inherited by his daughter Matilda, whom would then pass the title through her children to the house of Plantagenet. The Holy Roman Empire has been divided between the rightful Emperor Lothar von Supplingenberg and the anti-King Konrad von Hohenstauffen, who has been crowned King of Italy as a rebel house refusing to acknowledge the authority of von Supplingenberg. Mstislav Rurikovich has unified the various Rurikovich principalities of the Rus, while Bela II Arpad of Hungary also rules his dynasty’s Croat holdings in personal union. The Komnenid Restoration has begun in the Roman Empire, and retaken territory in Anatolia has helped the Emperor to stave off further Islamic advances, alongside the help provided by the First Crusade, which has founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Levant, presently ruled by King Folques de Anjou. Caliph al-Hafiz al-Fatimi maintains tenuous control of Egypt in the face of the losses in the levant suffered by the Fatimid house in the First Crusade, while the Seljuk Sultanate likewise reels from losses in Anatolia and Syria, though its continued dominance of the Sunni Caliph guarantees them a certain degree of power in the region.

Any of these situations might rightly draw attention, but the most remarkable of them all lies not to the west, but to the furthest east. A small nomadic host, bedraggled and riding hard, has arrived just north of the Tarim Basin. At its head rides Huangdi Yaerud Dashi, the Lord Liao, Emperor of China.

Or, at least, so he would style himself.

Dashi is an almost impossibly distant relative of Yaerud Aga, Huangdi Tianzuo, the last Liao Emperor of the Middle Kingdom, being a cousin eight times removed. Yet nevertheless Dashi is the closest relation to Emperor Tianzuo who is also a direct descendent of Yaerud Ebege, Huangdi Taizu, founder of the Dynasty.

When the Northern, Central and Southern Capitals of the Liao Dynasty fell to the invaders which toppled their House, Emperor Tianzuo came to Dashi for assistance. Yet Tianzuo proved a fool, worthy of the scorn which even his own Khitan peoples heaped upon him in his pitiful life, wasting Dashi’s assistance and leading a pointless defense of their final strongholds which caused almost the entire remainder of the Yaerud clan to perish. Eventually Tianzuo was forced to flee as a beggar to the Lords of Xia, would-be Emperors who straddled the western marches of the Middle Kingdom, eking out a meagre existence between the rule of the Song Dynasty to the south and the Liao to the northwest. Yet even here Tianzuo disgraced himself, demanding that Dashi spend the last of his men in an ill-fated and impossible attempt to retake the Chinese throne from the enemy. Dashi refused, and permitted Tianzuo to be captured by the new would-be Jin Dynasty for his trouble.

Upon the death of Tianzuo, to Dashi fell the title of Lord Liao and the eminence of the title of Huangdi. His wisdom was soon made evident as, rather than choosing to foolishly waste the lives of his people in a misbegotten attack upon the Jin dynasty, Dashi gathered all of the Khitan men and women he could and formed a great host, fighting through the once-vassal territories of Mongolia and, finally, reaching a far-away, untapped land of potential. Yet House Yaerud had not given up its designs on China; the Huangdi did not sell his actions to his people as a flight. He has led them to a new, virgin land, one with weak men unfamiliar with the majesty of the Middle Kingdom. Here they will conquer, rebuild, and eventually strike back for their homeland, the rightful patrimony of the Liao Dynasty.

The enemy that overthrew the Liao were none other than the Jurchen, their one-time vassals and a fellow nomadic people from the northeast fringes of the Middle Kingdom. Wanyan Wuqimai--history will remember him as Jin Taizong--is their current ruler, the brother of Aguda, Wanyan Taizu, founder of the Jin dynasty (who, insultingly, was given the same Temple Name as the Yaerud Taizu, founder of the Liao dynasty!). Taizong was an adept military commander who handed the Liao their final defeats, and Dashi personally met the self-styled Emperor in battle several times while still in service to the fool-Emperor Tianzuo. That necessity has forced the Khitans to flee their homeland almost smarts less than turning tail from Taizong himself, who is still embroiled in a punishing civil war with the Han Song dynasty in southern China. Yet the choice was between vassalage to the Song or independence, and Dashi swore to his people that he would not make the mistake that Tianzuo did when he fled to the Xia to ask for aid--the Khitan were, are, and shall be a free people, proud and unbent.

This does not, however, mean that their mortal hatred of the Jurchen is forgotten, nor that they wish ill on the Song for so long as they choose to fight the emerging Jin; in a state of civil war with powerful vassals threatening his rule, a single battle gone ill could cause Taizong’s reign to falter. The same day that the great Khitan host emerged on the other side of the hostile steppes--leaving, for the time being, their old life behind them--Dashi ordered that the raiders of the Khitans should strike back to the east to raid the Mongol allies of Taizong, in the hopes that pulling away Mongol support from Taizong’s wars might help to secure a crucial Song victory.

As the eldest surviving member of the Yaerud House, an able commander and the one chosen as Generalissimo by the last reigning Liao Emperor, none deny Dashi’s right to lead the Khitan people. Yet Dashi is the only one of the Liao Dynasty who can command this level of respect, and has no sons of his own. Should he die the throne would--at least in theory--pass to Yaerud Shishial, Dashi’s cousin twice removed, a rather incompetent man uncomfortably reminding many of Tianzuo, and further down the succession than the already-marginal Dashi. Only Dashi’s bloodline has any hope of maintaining lasting unity for the Khitans, and he himself is well-aware of this; during the flight through Mongolia he was wed to Tabuyen, the Lady Siau, a matrilineal cousin of Dashi's and scion of one of the loyalist Khitan houses. But, despite her beauty and wisdom, Tabuyen is a frightened girl, more comfortable with a book than a man. Though she has done her best to fulfill her duty, as yet Dashi remains without sons.

On the same day that the raids against the Jin dynasty were proclaimed, then, Dashi announced that he would be taking two women as concubines, worthy additions to the harem of the Huangdi: Lady Gonu and Lady Baish.

The Lady Gonu is a frail but perceptive young woman who used her ruthless pursuit of power and the interests of the Liao Dynasty to draw the eye of the Huangdi, and eventually sold herself as a spymaster and willing woman to the Emperor. Although she is both paranoid and vicious, this is seen by Dashi as a beneficial trait in a spymaster and rider, and this latter, at least, all Khitan women now are. For so long as they ride the steppes, the division between men and women has been much-reduced from its already quite egalitarian stance in Khitan society, such that all might fight at need. Though Gonu’s weak body prevents her from serving as a warrior, her agile mind and uncompromising nature make her even more valuable to the Emperor.

Lady Baish, by contrast, is less impressive. With a homely complexion and a narcissistic streak, Baish has come to Dashi for no other reason than to improve her own standing, and her own love of herself. Yet she is not without merits; she is a skilled administrator, which the roving Khitan people might well need before all is done, and, crucially to Dashi, she is a lustful woman besides. For so long as she is willing to make due effort to provide a son, Dashi is willing to tolerate her arrogance.

At the same time that Dashi takes Gonu and Baish into his household, however, an announcement is made that explicitly names Tabuyen regent for Dashi's house. However comely the concubines may be, they pale in comparison to the beauty and majesty of a scion of the Siau, one of the last surviving noble houses of the Khitan. It is made eminently clear that Tabuyen stands above them.

Shortly after the arrival of the Huangdi in the west, with the Khitan people still unsure of their surroundings, two brothers arrive at the camp of the Emperor: Kopti and Ituk. They had heard of the arrival of the Emperor from their lord, Isen Tomur Ediz of Qarashahr, who had aided the Emperor on his journey with passage through his lands. Lord Ediz had reneged on his promise of tribute to the Huangdi, however, and Kopti and Ituk were forced to leave his service of their own volition in order to find the Emperor.

They have offered their services as soldiers and guides, both of which they profess to be skilled at. Lamenting his people’s lack of knowledge of the area, Dashi was eager to accept their service. “Tell me all you know of these lands and the people who live in them,” the Emperor told them, “and you will be rewarded generously!”

This the brothers did, but not as faithfully as the Emperor might have hoped; they have not, of course, left the service of their old master to enter his own without ulterior motives. Wealth certainly is part of it, but their own Uighur people have been driven to the edge of extinction by the advancing Qarluq and Qipchaq peoples--those whom just so happen to surround the new encampment of the Emperor.

“The Qarluqs are a vile people,” Kopti told the Emperor, “yet they are rich. The Qipchaq are the stronger, yet they are poor; they are warriors first. If Your Eminence should wish to strike out and prove your people’s strength, the Qarluq should undoubtedly be the first target. The money and horses gained from their conquest would bring you great prestige, and your people could then easily ride north and challenge the Qipchaqs, and thereby prove your celestial right to rule.”

Such were the poisoned words spoken to the Emperor, and so it was that Yaerud Dashi became an unwitting pawn in an effort to save the Uighur peoples from extinction.

Kopti and Ituk spoke of riches, but in truth more pressing matters occupy the minds of the Khitan people: food, water, and grazing. It was the Lady Baish's unpleasant duty to make clear to Dashi, who had always been a warlord first and lacked familiarity with rule, that their people were simply not in a position to fight a real war.

"We have traveled across hostile lands with limited resources, few wains, and but a part of our people. Though your efforts have brought us through to safety, all but the whole of our people have been spent in the journey," she reported, careful to avoid offense as much as she may. "We have lost most of what little we were able to take with us, and have now few riders ready to fight. The few horses we do have are not given chance to foal, as by your command many riders are spent in raids against the Mongol traitors.

“There are not enough wagons, nor riders for security, for our people to spread out and graze their herds. Already I have heard of men begging for aid over starving horses. Before wealth and glory can be considered, Lord, survival must be attended to. If our people do not have wains, spare horses to foal and folk to care for the animals, what few riders we have will soon be left without mounts for want of feed, and our camp made defenseless.”

It is said Dashi pondered this problem for over a month before finally declaring that all souls fit to fight should find themselves at his camp. Some 200 extra riders dutifully came forth, but if they expected to be put to work caring for animals, they were soon rudely disabused. Their Huangdi was not an administrator but a warrior. He planned to bet the entire future of the Khitan on the success of a raid for horses and slaves.

“We are surrounded by enemies!” the Huangdi proclaimed. “Foes who have trampled us to the east, and vultures who would do so gladly in the west! We have come to this new land through pain and toil, but our right to life shall not be given to us freely; we must take it, as our ancestors did! We will ride forth and shatter those who stand against us! We shall take their women, their wagons, their children, their horses! The Khitan will be reborn here, by the strength of our spears!”

On the 22nd of March, 1132, the thundering of hooves in Emil announced to the steppe the arrival of the Khitan Horde.

By Dashi’s order, and despite protests by his Uighur bannermen, the isolated Khan of the Qirghiz Turks, Uzur, was to be the first target of the Khitans. Though Kopti and Ituk insisted that the Qirghiz were also victims of the Qarluqs and Qipchaqs and had but little wealth, Dashi overrode them. “All who live within our sight and do not pay homage are the enemy,” he said flatly, and the two were compelled to obey.

With Uzur’s army away, a rapid victory and the acquisition of much-needed wealth was foreseen by the Huangdi, who was well-aware that the Khitan would be required to purchase the wagons they desperately needed at tremendous cost; they would need to raid far and wide to be able to afford the goods and livestock which would become their lifeblood. It did not matter if the raids made the Khitan enemies of all the steppe, so long as their it could support their people.

Upon arriving in Zaysan with thundering hooves, the cry went up that the “Celestial Khan” had arrived, and panic set about the defenders. Rumors of Lord Dashi had preceded him, and his skillful overmastering of the local defenders soon earned him the surprised respect of Kopti and Ituk, who had before seen him as little more than a tool in their schemes; they did not know the meaning of his title, nor the glory from which he had been forced to flee.

The pillaging host bivouacked in Zaysan for some months, rounding up the young boys and women, tying them together, and riding them back to Emil to serve as slaves; even the Huangdi took a girl from there, a Tengri woman by the name of Dilek, who became his camp girl. It was during these months of final rape and pillage that word arrived from the Huangdi’s riders in Mongolia that they had successfully sacked a village of the Khan there, and had brought back horses, slaves and wealth of their own.

The dual successes led the army to proclaim Dashi as the “Great Pillager."

In the autumn, as Dashi’s army prepared to march for Ayaguz to the west, he received word that his camp girl Dilek had become pregnant. With great wealth already acquired from the raid on the Qirghiz, Dashi duly ordered that the host return to Emil, so that the child could be born in safety, and the goods gained from the raid on the Qirghiz could be organized and sold in order to pay for the wagons so desperately needed by his people.

Upon the host’s arrival almost four months were spent with Dilek being attended to by the best midwives available, poked and prodded and treated by medicine so far beyond her comprehension that she believed it magic. Having grown up hearing stories of the Celestial Khan to the east, to see his might in person, much less the magic of his people, was overawing. Though she was little more than a slave and was treated none too kindly, she believed that to be the owned woman of the Celestial Khan was as honorable as it was intimidating and humiliating.

Thus, when her time came to give birth, though she did not love Dashi, she feared and respected him. When the first child of the Huangdi, her baby girl Ordelhan, was placed in her lap, she gave the order that she should be permitted to breastfeed the babe herself, and Dashi honored her for her personal dedication to their child, giving her the title of Lady of the Court.

The birth of a royal princess was met with much fanfare by the Khitan peoples, but less fanfare among Dashi’s other women, particularly the Lady Siau, Dashi’s wife.

“You dishonor me by permitting a slave to give you your first child,” Tabuyen told him that evening.

“I dishonor nothing,” Dashi replied, evenly but firmly. “I have given you five years to give me a son. I honor your House, Tabuyen, but I cannot honor it to the exclusion of my own.”

The Emperor then left his wife, and it is rumored that he spent the night with the Lady Gonu instead.

Whether Gonu became pregnant from that night or from an earlier is not certain, but two months after the row between the Emperor and his wife, it was announced that a new Imperial birth was forthcoming. The rift between Dashi and Tabuyen deepened even as the Lady Gonu increased her influence by convincing the Huangdi to hold a tournament of riders to celebrate the birth of his daughter, and the imminent birth of what Gonu was sure would be a son.

The games were accordingly held that summer, and, as was fitting, the Huangdi won the competition with his incredible martial skill, despite facing off against both Kopti and Ituk, who were themselves no slouches in the saddle. The Emperor’s victory against them only further impressed the two Uighur, who congratulated Dashi on his victory, and the imminent birth of his second child, whom they both insisted would certainly be a son.

Although the Khitan would not learn of it for a very long time, at the same time that the summer contests were taking place in far-away Emil, the Pope in Rome called a Crusade against the Fatimid Caliphate: the Second Crusade. Such eminent names as King Boleslaw III of Poland, King Henry of England, and King Ruggero of Sicily promised their contribution, while precious few side with the Fatimid Caliphate, already suffering from the losses of the First Crusade and struggling with a burden of debt brought on by their unsuccessful defense. Should the Second prove successful, the Catholic position in Jerusalem may well become unassailable.

Following the summer games, Dashi led a brief raid on the people of Ayaguz before returning to Emil to be present for the birth of his second child. While on the raid, sitting around the great bonfire of his host and regaling Kopti and Ituk with tales of the great fight out of Jurchen lands, through the hostile deserts of the Xia territory and the perilous steppes patrolled by the traitorous Mongols, inspiration strikes the Huangdi to write down these travails and their importance to the Khitan people in a codex--not merely a history of their people and their birthright, but also a tale of their hardiness, survival, and how, against all odds, success can be born from failure. It is all the more important that it be recorded because Dashi is not a young man, and he realizes this--at 45, he might very well die before his heir (should he even be graced with one) can come to age, and all that might be left to him are the few recorded words his father might be able to give him.

Upon his return to Emil, Dashi orders that the few scribes the Khitan have be brought to his tent, to begin to take down the account of the great Khitan Anabasis. It will be a work of years, but, should it be completed, it would allow the Khitan people to never forget where they came from, nor their intent: to one day return there, and exact justice.

On the 20th of December, in the frigid depths of winter, in a yurt of chilled air despite the fire burning within, the Huangdi’s long-awaited son is born: Yaerud Belbun, son of Dashi.

The announcement of a male heir is met with joy from the host, who view the birth of a son as an affirmation that the Huangdi is favored by Heaven. Indeed, Belbun's birth is only the capstone to months of good news for the Khitan, beginning with their Huangdi's successful negotiation to purchase the wagons and fodder his people desperately needed some months earlier. Relieved of the most menial obligations of camp-work by the influx of slaves brought from the Qirghiz to the north, the Khitan host now boasts enough free men and supplies to defend roaming nomadic settlements, and riders had finally begin to spread out throughout Emil, away from Dashi's central camp, a few weeks prior. With broader grazing the population of horses has slowly begun to rise naturally. So too has the population of Khitan, as the influx of slave-girls taken as concubines, as well as young boys destined to be raised Khitan-fashion, has provided for the immediate needs of a host which was, frankly, approaching a population bottleneck before Dashi's daring victory. Belbun, then, is born into a winter that does not seem quite so cold and hopeless; rather, he is a child which represents the Khitan people's resilience, and the hopeful spring to come--the first springtime of hope the Khitan will have known for decades.

But not all celebrate Belbun's birth. Dashi's wife Tabuyen is now the mortal enemy of his son’s mother, the Lady Gonu, while Dashi has further honored Gonu due to her proven ability to provide him sons. With time, it will be Lady Siau who has the last laugh, however; Belbun will grow to be a homely and somewhat dim-witted boy, not quite the image of poised control of his father. And, as with any nomadic people, it is not the first son who is guaranteed to lead them, but the strongest--there is time yet to upset the ambitions of the son of Gonu.

The Huangdi spent some months in Emil with his concubine and new son, resting and awaiting the arrival of warmer weather. In late February, bolstered by unseasonably-warm weather, his host set off anew for the first ride against the Qarluq Khanate.

As the Khitan host passed south of Lake Ebinur and entered the region of Yulduz, Kopti and Ituk despaired of the host of Qarluqs arrayed against them. But the Emperor proved his skill, leading a crushing rout of the forces of Aepak Chigil, the Lord of Yulduz, and a wholesale sack of his people’s camps.

Overfilled with confidence, the Huangdi gave the order that the Khan himself should be set upon, and accordingly the Khitan host turned west, to Yetisu. Yet the Emperor was over-confident. Upon the Khitan's arrival in the Khan’s lands, their depleted host met another of a thousand riders or more.

“My Lord,” Ituk begged, “we must retreat. Their numbers are too great for our host to prevail.”

“Perhaps,” Dashi acknowledged. “Yet should we retreat they will merely pursue us, and bleed us all the more for turning tail. We will not run from a fight. I have run from both too few and too many in my time, and I know when each should be done. And we fight!”

Perhaps it was the correct decision, but the blood of the Khitans soaking into the ground of Yetisu certainly did not make it seem so. The Khan of the Qarluqs devastated the Emperor’s cavalry charge, and though the Emperor was able to fight through the enemy and lead a successful retreat, proving once and for all both his skill in battle and skill in arms, the day went to the Qarluqs. Hundreds of horses and their riders, priceless all, were slain. With them, it seemed, perished the dream of a springtime of hope.

“This defeat is a disaster, my Lord!” Ituk challenged him as they rode hard for Emil. “We cannot hold them if they ride upon us.”

“You speak to the Huangdi of the Middle Kingdom, the Lord Liao--mind your tongue! Let me fight on my own land,” Dashi spat, “and should I fail then, you will be welcome to chastise me with the sharp side of your sword!”

Within days the Huangdi’s scouts confirmed the worst, that Khan Togli’s forces were giving pursuit. Fast riders were dispatched to the Khitan camp to return with reinforcements, and the Emperor’s host rode all the harder, that they could set up position in the advantageous passes between lake Alakol and the northern river, where the main Khitan camp was held.

Some 622 Khitans eventually faced off against almost a thousand Qarluqs on the banks of lake Alakol, the enemy host seeming little worse for wear despite their recent run-in with the Khitans. Both Ituk and Kopti had seen a similar sight before, when their own Uighur hosts had been trounced by the larger forces of the Qarluqs. Their people were nervous, then turned frightened when the Qarluqs charged, and finally broke, to their ruin; they were sure the Khitans would do the same, and were prepared to take their horses and leave, knowing that the Emperor would perish should his men fail. It seemed that the hopes they had placed in the rumors of the powerful Kings of the East were unfounded.

Yet they were surprised.

“We fight here,” the Huangdi cried as he rode down the line of light cavalry at the head of his host, “in the lands we have bought! And I do not say that we earned them, for we have not--we purchased them, and not with blood, but with years of flight, of subterfuge, of double-dealing, of buying passage, of the dishonorable sale of our own people, our own life’s-blood, for a night's meal. We paid these dear prices just to make our way through lands that were once ours to this new poor, inhospitable, frigid, uncultured, nigg*rdly backwater.

“I see you with mouths agape, shocked by my words! Are they wrong? They are not. But I do not speak them to demoralize you, but rather to lift you up. What have we suffered through? We have suffered dishonor enough to shame a man to death; we have suffered loss of life enough to make one wish for death; we have suffered the shame born of a people once-great, reduced to scrounging for scraps. But we are not dead."

“Why are we not dead? By all rights it would have been easier to die than to suffer the shame we did, the subterfuge and the long nights of riding in terror, to come to this land. I will tell you why we are not dead: we are not dead because every Khitan knows in their soul that there is something greater that belongs to us, something equal in majesty to that which we have left behind. Across the next mountain, down the next valley, there is safety; and across the mountain after that, food. And the next mountain water, and the next mountain women, and the next mountain slaves, and the next mountain wealth, and finally there, beyond that last hill, a kingdom of our own, bedecked in splendor and sanctity, the image of that which we lost! It does not matter how far it is, it is there, to be made manifest through our deeds! The worst of our fate is already behind us, and what we might attain tomorrow is only greater than which we possess today!

“I say to you that I am the Lord Liao, rightful ruler of the Middle Kingdom, and I have not yet my Empire! The mountain of my dreams is not yet one we have crossed” Dashi cried, raising his sword. “And I will not die to such a pathetic host as this!”

With that the Emperor charged, and his people, whipped into an indescribable frenzy, charged after him; the Uighur brothers were caught so off-guard by his speech that they almost fell behind. The Qarluqs were so utterly stunned by the smaller host charging the larger that many of them broke before the enemy even drew close, and as the Huangdi’s van pierced the center of the enemy lines, the enemy force’s commander, Begluk Toglioglu, heir of Khan Togli, was caught in the charge and killed. The Qarluqs panicked, and their retreat rapidly turned into a rout, then a disorganized bloodbath as the Khitan horse-archers slaughtered hundreds as they rode away in a blind panic. A single volley of arrows is all the Qarluqs fired, and it killed scarcely thirty men.

Those who made it back to Yetisu all reported the same thing: the chanting in the background that haunted their retreat. “Hail the Huangdi, hail the Spring of Hope! We ride forth to the Mountain of Dreams!”

After the Emperor’s shocking victory against Togli Khan, both sides settled into an uneasy ceasefire, with riders patrolling the lands that separated the clans, but with no incursions into the enemy’s territory, as both licked their wounds. Yet not all was well in the lands of the Qarluqs, as Togli’s surprise defeat and the death of his heir softened his reputation as a warrior and cast the succession of the Khanate into crisis. Forced to launch an ill-fated expedition to raid the south in order to shore up his standing among his riders, bled of manpower and of commanders from his earlier crushing defeat, Togli’s invasion of his enemy Khan Ibrahim only led to further defeats and the occupation of his lands. Thousands of his people were carried away, along with most of his family and a great wealth of slaves, leaving the Qarluqs destitute and Togli Khan humiliated and on the verge of being overthrown.

Dashi’s delay showed his prudence well, for if he had struck earlier, without allowing his forces to regroup, his defeat would have been almost certain. But he has instead allowed his enemy to destroy himself, and now, with the Qarluq Khanate reduced to infighting and only defended by a few hundred riders across its great expanse, their destruction is all but inevitable.

As the Emperor led his forces forward, he called for Ituk to come to his side. As the Uighur man rode beside him, the Emperor asked, “Do you now seek to chasten me for my actions?”

“No, Huangdi,” Ituk bowed his head. “All has happened as you have predicted. I am shamed by my words.”

“You showed concern,” Dashi answered him, “and that is both prudent and honorable. But even if you do not and cannot know of the stock from which I am born, you must do your best to learn. I am the Huangdi; it is not the same as your Khans, and the crude title of Celestial Khan does not encompass it either. I am the Interlocutor of Heaven. You will see, even if it cannot be described to you.”

“My Lord Liao,” Ituk replied, “I have already seen it.”

Meanwhile, still far from the concerns of the Khitan people marching to their first war, the Second Crusade has victory. Forces of duch*ess Matilda de Normandie, the daughter of the now-deceased King Henry de Normandie, captured the Fatimid capital at Cairo and declared their intent to place her elderly uncle Robert de Normandie, eldest of the sons of William the Conqueror, on the throne. It’s rumored that the current King of England, Stephen de Blois, only permitted this because he suspected that Robert would not survive the journey; Stephen's brother, Comte Thibaut II of Champagne, is Robert’s closest relation and heir. Should Robert fail to produce a son, which is quite likely given his extreme age and the perils of the journey to his new fief, House de Blois stands to gain control both of England and Egypt in an incredibly short period, catapulting from mere vassals of the King of France to some of the greatest power-players in the Christian world.

Provided they hold their new fiefs, that is.

This is perhaps unlikely not just because Robert is a tremendously old and unlikeable man, but because the Sunni Caliph, rejoicing over the defeat of the heretic Fatimid Caliph, has called for a Jihad to counter the successful Crusade. Although the Sunni Caliph has little power compared to that which the Fatimid Caliphate once held, Robert’s realm is in a perilous position, and likely to undergo a succession very shortly; it could well prove unable to withstand the pressures of its oppressed Muslim populace and the influx of zealous Sunni warriors both.

The Huangdi is not even aware that Egypt exists, however, as he rides roughshod over the yurts of Aepak Chigil, and tramples those hiding within. In fact, even as he lays waste to the Qarluq people who dared to withstand him, the war itself holds little sway over his mind. Instead, it is the word which he has received from his camp that preoccupies him: his wife, Tabuyen, is with child. It will be the first fully legitimate child of his body, and, if a son, would likely take priority in the succession over his firstborn, Belbun.

More than that, however, it is a symbol of the reconciliation between Tabuyen and her husband. Her anger at his dishonoring of her was gradually mellowed through lavish gifts of Chinese jewelry stolen by the bands sent into Mongolia by the Emperor, as well as the realization with time that the shame she felt was hers to own--it was she, after all, who had neglected to provide her husband with sufficient opportunity to permit her to fulfill her duty as wife.

“This war must be quick,” the Emperor cried to his men the evening that he received the news. “I will be in Emil for the birth of my child! But I do not think we need worry--I think they will all be dead before the frost melts!”

His prediction was met with the cheers of his men, who rode for Yetisu on the morrow.

The month from the 25th of March to the 25th of April were, in the recollections of the Huangdi, said to be the most vindicating of his life.

The first news that arrived was the greatest of all: the Jurchen usurper, Wanyan Wuqimai, had been deposed some weeks prior by a rebellious Han general, and his whole house put to death. After a crucial battle was lost--due, Liao histories would continually assert, to the absence of critical Mongol levies--Tek-p’ung Ts’ao declared himself the first Emperor of the Qin Dynasty, crushing the remaining pockets of Jurchen resistance and making the Jin dynasty one of the shortest to ever have a grasp on China, ruling in truth for just over a dozen years.

This, of course, does not mean that the Qin dynasty sees the Liao dynasty as an ally, or even a neutral observer; to Shizu of Qin the Liao are still enemies, dangerous foreigners who dominated China not long before, and have intent to do so again. If confronted with this accusation, Dashi would not even be able to deny it.

Yet that does not mean that the Lord Liao wishes to draw the ire of the Qin, especially as all reports indicate that their hold on the throne is strong, and the Song Dynasty in the south, long bled by the Jin, is not in a position to challenge them either. Thus, reluctantly, the Huangdi orders that his raiders return from Mongolia and rejoin the main Khitan host. The Lord Liao indeed knows well how to pick his battles, and the Qin might serve as a useful pawn in the dangerous game the Khitan people now play on a steppe surrounded by enemies.

Yet the number of enemies on those steppes are rapidly decreasing. Just five days after the news of the Jurchen deposition and the massive, drunken celebrations that raged through Emil and Yetisu at the news, the last camp of Yetisu falls, and the family of Khan Togli falls into the hands of the Huangdi. In return for their release, the Khan agrees to take the entirety of his people west, while leaving all the spare horses, wagons, and slaves it is possible to. This the Huangdi assents to, and the Qarluqs--those who do not manage to hide within the scattered tribes occupying the region, at any rate--are soon pushed out of the territories, to be replaced by camps of the Khitans.

On the night of their victory, the bonfires of the Khitan host were raucous with the celebrations, yet both Ituk and Kopti were quiet. Eventually they took a quite inebriated Dashi aside.

“What you have done,” Ituk told him, “is beyond what either of us ever expected. As you said yourself, YOU are not what we expected, or understood.”

Kopti nodded his assent. “We have sworn fealty to you before, but we have done so in self-interest, for wealth and the safety of our people. We would swear it now to you again--not because you are now more powerful than you have ever been, but because I believe I now understand what it means to hold the title of Huangdi.”

“And what do you think it means,” the Emperor leaned close, bloodshot eyes suddenly piercing.

“It is to hold the threads of history in your hand, and command them to weave in the manner you wish,” Ituk answered without hesitation.

The Huangdi smiled widely, but said no more to them, and they nothing to him. From that day, Kopti and Ituk were the Emperor’s men, to the exclusion of all else.

Prior to the victory against the Qarluq Khanate, the Huangdi had little support from other realms, which variously either did not accept his title or did not care for the dealings of a washed-up one-time Emperor. The defeat of the Qarluqs did not completely change this view, given the small size of their army and the minimal territorial gains which the Emperor attained through their defeat, but it did cause the Buddhist community to sit up and take notice.

The Celestial Khan, last Buddhist ruler of China, had arrived on the steppe with nothing and conquered land for his people at almost impossible odds. His strength was growing, and it was well-known that he was preparing for a return to China. Faced with the prospect of further Confucian repression or the restoration of Buddhist primacy, it was an easy calculation for Buddhist rulers to begin to recognize the rights of the Liao, both to expand their influence in the region and to avoid potential reprisals from marauding bands of Khitan horsem*n.

Upon the defeat of the Qarluqs, the Emperor sent a missive to Tibet and India demanding the recognition of the Liao and the coming of delegates to his camp at Emil. Over the coming weeks several hundred messengers would arrive at the camp of the Huangdi, from which would be born the first Buddhist cooperation seen in centuries: the Chosen of Ashoka, an honor guard in service to all Buddhists, but nominally founded by and subservient to the Liao and their interests.

On the 25th of April, Taila, the Grandmaster of the new Order, traveled to Emil to pay homage to the Huangdi. With him he brought a Kingly gift: a bone from Siddhārtha Gautama, the Buddha himself. Even as lackadaisical a practitioner as Dashi was, to be given a fragment of the Buddha was such a tremendous honor that it became one of the defining moments of his life.

The tent of the Celestial Khan was overflowing with incense and bedecked with golden artefacts of China when Taila was ushered in, carrying a golden box inlaid with ivory.

“With the rightful surrender of this fragment of the Gautama Buddha to the Great Huangdi, he who is called the Spring of Hope,” Taila intoned as he knelt before the Emperor and raised the reliquary above his head, “the people of the Buddha do acknowledge the Lord Liao as their sworn defender and liege. May your victories be eternal, and our restoration at hand!”

“The return to the Middle Kingdom will be a long one,” the Emperor spoke in answer. “It will not be accomplished in my lifetime, and I doubt it shall be in the lifetime of my son. Yet for so long as my influence might hold, I promise this: that we will return, and that we will not forget the loyalty of those who sheltered us in our hour of need.”

That summer, as emissaries continued to filter into Emil and many new would-be chiefs required the intercession of the Emperor to solve disputes and allocate land prior to their riding out for the new Khitan territories, it was decided that Dashi would remain in Emil for the remainder of the year. Much of his decision had to do with the pregnancy of Tabuyen, to be sure, but it was also more than that--Dashi wanted time to reflect upon his position within the cosmos, and whether he was truly following the example of the Buddha, of whose earthly remains he was now the steward.

When Tabuyen gave birth to a little girl, Manir, Dashi understood the message which the universe was sending: his efforts in war were superlative, but his efforts as a man were lacking. He did not speak a word or betray a sign of his displeasure to his wife, but a few weeks after their daughter’s birth, the Emperor began to sit with a Guru from Tibet, who preached of the Way of Two Truths.

The Chinese court had always followed the example of Mahayana Buddhism, which had allowed for the achievement of Enlightenment in a single lifetime--without such a concession, how could the Emperor be said to be the divine agent which he undeniably was? Each Huangdi had been treated as being almost predestined toward achieving Enlightenment, blessed by Heaven from their very birth. Yet such a concept now seemed not merely dated but foolish. Was the fool Tianzuo last-Emperor, slayer of his own son, an enlightened being? And for Dashi, if he could not even make good a return to his homeland in a single generation, how could he somehow achieve the even greater challenge of Enlightenment in the same time?

The change which the universe demanded of him was humility: the recognition that he was not, nor ever had been, the Interlocutor of Heaven; that power, if ever it had resided in the person of a Yaerud, had been reserved for the elder Liao who sat the Dragon Throne before the coming of Tianzuo to undermine his House's honor. Compared to his august (and distant) relations Dashi was but a man, the imperfect remnant of a greater branch of his House.

But in the shedding of these preconceptions and the peaceful chanting of the Tantras, the Huangdi found the peace he sought. He now knew hope: the hope that, one day, his House might be worthy to achieve such an honor once more, through merit and righteous effort.

Though he could not know it, Dashi’s personal questioning of his faith coincided with a broader religious collapse in the Mediterranean world, as the first new Jihad spectacularly fails to recapture Egypt. With the Isma’ili faithful barely holding on to any of their territories and their Caliph in effect a mere puppet of North African tribesmen, the Abbasid Sunni Caliph fared little better, suffering humiliation by the Seljuk refusal to support the Jihad called by their own vassal. Islam in the Orient has been dealt a serious blow to its confidence. With House de Blois firmly on the throne of Egypt following the death of King Robert and Jerusalem’s southwestern flank secured, the long, slow death of Islam was thought to be at hand.

At the beginning of the year, with the population of the Khitans swelling due to their newly-acquired grazing land and an influx of fellow Khitan peoples who had previously been trapped between the Jurchen and the Mongols while the Civil War still raged in China, the Huangdi calls for another muster of riders, and 250 Khitan men and women fresh from China join the Emperor’s host, swelling its ranks in preparation for another raid south, this time against Ibrahim II of Turkestan, he who oppresses the Uighurs.

Yet grave news comes the same evening, as the Emperor, who had been feeling ill for days, finally begins to pass a bloody flux from his bowels. In the coming days his illness would deepen, and be joined by a fever and vomiting. Unable to keep either food or drink down and with his life-water passing quickly from his body, the Celestial Khan’s figure rapidly shrinks and turns frail. Almost 50 years of age and faced with one of the deadliest conditions known to Chinese medicine, few believe the Emperor can be saved.

Tabuyen stays with him day and night, giving her daughter over to wet-nurses and members of her household as she tends the Huangdi, yet despite her best efforts he only grows ever more frail. Eventually even the Lady Dilek and Lady Gonu are called away from their duties to support the Lady Siau, and the three of them are forced to care for the Emperor at all hours of the day, as only through their careful ministrations is it possible for the Lord Liao to keep down any water.

Even in his fevered, delirious state, the absence of Lady Baish is well-noted by the Huangdi.

Although the Emperor’s condition improves by March, as his vomiting and fever vanish and he is again able to take water, the bloody flux will not leave him no matter what Tabuyen treats him with. For months more he is not fully aware of who or where he is. Eventually, around April of 1137, care of the Emperor is given over to the Ladies Dilek and Gonu, while Tabuyen assumes control of the Khitan people in her capacity as Regent. This uneasy state will continue for eight more months, with all parties uncertain of the Emperor’s survival, until corpses are found at the bottom of the river which the Emperor’s personal encampment had been set up abreast of. With the removal of the encampment to the shores of Lake Ebinur the Emperor’s condition finally begins to improve, and, though he is still weak, by December he is fully returned to his faculties.

It is no surprise that his first action is to “promote” the Lady Baish. Her absence from his care was the matter of much furious muttering by the Emperor even in his stupor, and now with his mind returned to him his disgust has turned to fury. She is the only one of his women who has failed to provide him with a single child despite her lasciviousness, and in his hour of need she turned her back on him.

Baish is forcibly married to the Emperor’s (very) distant cousin, Yaerud Sabon. Sabon is not a foul man (sadly), yet being married in full, and to a minor member of the Yaerud clan as well, is a tremendous insult to the Lady Baish, who can no longer use her title nor her uncertain marital status to curry favors. She has been effectively excluded from all avenues of power, to her immense shame and fury; it is here she passes from the historical record--though history will remember the sons she gave Sabon.

Baish is replaced in the Huangdi's tent by a Qirghiz woman taken from the far north, one Ilkay. Yet the Emperor does not use Ilkay for his bed, at least presently, and instead she is given charge of nursing the Huangdi back to full health, so that the Ladies Tabuyen, Dilek and Gonu can give the fullness of their time to managing the affairs of the host during Dashi's recuperation.

The bloody flux would finally cease in March, but it would take several more years of very careful, gradual training to rebuild the musculature lost by the Emperor during his long convalescence, a process which the Huangdi wisely kept far out of the sight of his bannermen, lest they see him in his weakened state. Yet though his recovery was not fully complete, by late autumn the Emperor was fit enough to finally leave his tent and travel among the Khitan--yet the people he returned to were much-changed from those he had left when he entered his convalescence.

When he had first been confined to his tent there were little over 6,000 people in all within his host. But in the past year and a half that number had increased by some 2,000, thanks to the return of many lost Khitans from China, and the natural growth of their nation from slavery, concubinage, and cast-offs from the Qarluqs and Qipchaqs willing to give up all their social standing in order to join the Khitans, so that their children might have status within the Celestial Khan’s ranks.

The number was staggering, and foreboded what could soon come to pass: a great increase in the size of the Khitan war-host, perhaps to the point that they might challenge even the settled realms.

“But that would require funding,” Dashi told Kopti and Ituk when he met with them for the first time in years. “A great deal more than we presently have. I intend to raise it by assaulting the Khan Ibrahim. Your people will be put in danger by this. Do you object?”

“We do not,” Ituk replied.

“We could not even had we the right,” Kopti affirmed. “You are He Who Holds the Threads.”

Just before beginning the second major Khitan raid south, the Emperor’s scribes complete his account of the Liao Dynasty and the flight to the steppe. Although it was originally to have a triumphalist tone, the Huangdi’s increasing spirituality and recognition of his failings has led him to modify the work to reflect his new outlook. The book has now been titled “The Glory and Fall of the Khitan,” suggesting that the Khitan people only had their glory while they held the Dragon Throne, and, with its loss, have fallen not merely from China, but from the eyes of Heaven.

The work in the main reflects the interests of the Emperor, who has always been a general at heart. The long sequence of politics, rivalries and rebellions that led to the ousting of Tianzuo are glossed over, while the battles that represent the last stand of the Khitan people on the Jurchen plains comprises almost a third of the book, with fully half covering the great anabasis through the Jurchen lands to the Xia, and eventually through Mongolia to their new home. The heavy emphasis on battles and the Emperor’s insistence that they be portrayed in proper detail will cause later generations of Yaerud rulers skeptical of their true origins to consider the work fantastical, an arms manual meant to get children to pay attention to it through its unique imagery and unbelievable tales.

Still, that it is done takes the greatest burden from the Emperor’s mind. His past and deeds have been recorded, and now, for so long as his House lasts, even if they do not remember all that they are, they cannot forget everything, either.

The raid on Uighur land brought great wealth to the Huangdi, as well as many Uighur riders willing to join the camps of the Celestial Khan in the hopes that their efforts will see their homeland freed. The majority of the money from the raid goes to yet more wagons and provisions to allow the Khitan host to swell yet further, but a significant portion is set aside also for the expansion of the military host of the Khitans, which expands to account for over one man or woman in ten of the entire host, with 1,500 riders now with the Emperor at all times. More impressively, the Uighurs have taught the Khitans how to use lamellar barding techniques, and, like the Parthians of old, a group of heavy cavalry approximating cataphracts have been raised by the Emperor, to be used as shock forces to break any enemy who would dare stand against House Yaerud.

With good news already flowing in and another raid north planned, still further good news is received: Empress Tabuyen is again pregnant, perhaps this time with a son! Although the Emperor is eager to gain sufficient wealth and men to fund his expedition south and thus does not stay in Emil with his wife for the birth, he awaits the messenger with an eager, if nervous, heart.

It is with supreme difficulty that he suppresses his displeasure at the word that he has another daughter: Yaerud Sinelgen. Although she shows know sign of it at birth, Sinelgen, like her elder half-brother, would prove mentally stunted. It is a further embarrassment that the already-chastened Huangdi does not need.

“What more must I do to show my repentance?” the Emperor muttered to the warm stars one evening. As ever, Heaven held no answer for him.

Although Dashi is careful not to reveal his sorrow at the lack of another son, upon his return to Emil following the raid north, he asks after Tabuyen’s advice about how he might further cleanse his spirit. Not only being satisfied as a wise woman of letters, Tabuyen also spends a great deal of time among other Buddhists and, by all accounts, was intent on seeking after perfection in her lifetime.

“If what you seek is absolution and a path to freedom from the burdens of this life,” she told her husband, “what you seek is the discipline of a monastery. You should take apprenticeship among the Savaka-Sangha, husband, along with me. I have spent many a day at the monasteries, and know the Gurus there well. They can help rid you of whatever fouls your spirit, as they have helped me to do since we arrived in this cold place.”

“If it is good enough for you,” the old man smiled, “then it is good enough for me. I will cleanse myself, and do penance for my life of wrath, even if I cannot give it up.”

It seems the Huangdi’s decision could not have been more ideal! Immediately after his arrival at the monastery south of Lake Ebinur, his fortunes have turned around completely. Both the Lady Gonu and his new woman Ilkay have reported that they are pregnant!

More than just his concubines’ pregnancies, his wife has announced that she has found evidence of another great artifact of the Buddha nearby! The Emperor duly provides her with all the resources she needs to track it, and praises the universe for smiling on him and his willingness to cleanse himself through penance.

“Your kindness to an old man is beyond what I deserve!” he cried to the stars. “I am not worthy to have the eyes of Heaven turned upon me!”

But he spoke too soon. There is always the chance of embitterment.

First the Lady Gonu gave birth to a stillborn babe, although as another little girl Dashi was not so devastated as he would have been had it been a boy that had died. But, months later when Ilkay gave birth, it was discovered that she, too, gave him a girl--alive, but premature and frail. She would never grow up entirely normally, and would likely be stunted, in both mind and body, her whole life. It seems like Dashi's seed is itself foul, and can only birth broken, frail or slow babes; of all his get, only Manir proves to be free of any deformity.

The news of one lost babe and the premature birth of Harur was followed by news that Dashi considers far worse: Kopti, brother of Ituk, took ill with a wasting disease and passed only a few days after Harur's birth. Now only Ituk remains, still sworn with all his heart to the Emperor, but crushed by the loss of his brother. Dashi, too, is crushed; for the entirety of his time on the steppe, Kopti and Ituk have been his loyal commanders, his partners in every victory. The death of one of them seems the precursor to his own untimely death: his goals unaccomplished, his children variously malformed or slow, his people’s future uncertain.

“I will not say that I am ungrateful,” Dashi told the stars that night. “It was foolish of me to assume that a good omen will lead certainly to good fortune. I am chastened anew. I will endeavor to do better by my deeds in the future.

“But please,” he begged, a tear rolling down from his face, “please do not transmit my sins to my blood. My children should not suffer for what I am.”

Following the tragic loss of one of his daughters and the malformed birth of the second, Dashi entered into a long period of enforced solitude in the mountain monastery, foreswearing his obligations and once more giving over his rule to Tabuyen. She had truly grown to love her husband over the years and was overjoyed that he was taking her advice to heart, and so she ruled with all of the efficiency and grace with which she had come to be associated, and the Khitan prospered; yet raids did not take place, and without the much-needed influx of wealth, the population of the Khitan, and of their horses, began to stagnate.

Yet, though the riders of the Khitan host chafed at the long peace, the Huangdi was unwilling to leave the monastery until he had made true progress. In contravention of everything his people needed he parted with a tremendous sum of his wealth, and spent months living in cold, isolated conditions with only the Lady Dilek to prepare his meals--invariably plain rice, and perhaps a little fish if he were lucky.

But his dedication was rewarded. Dilek grew with child even as she tended to him in his isolation, and another hope--perhaps the last hope--for Dashi’s bloodline to be secured in truth came about.

The twins born of Dilek, Yaerud Tugusir and Yaerud Agdji, were greatly different from one another. Tugusir was a lanky but sickly child cursed with the seeming inferiority of Dashi's blood, a babe that Dilek feared would not survive. Agdji, on the other hand, was clearly a strong and healthy lad, one who took after his mother in looks. But that was the key--a strong LAD. Yaerud Dashi finally had a second son.

Celebrations again erupted across the Khitan host, though, as usual, the behavior of the Empress was much less enthusiastic. Outmaneuvered now through two male children not her own, she feared that the position of her House and of her daughters, Manir and Sinelgen, would be much-reduced--perhaps fatally so.

Rumor within House Yaerud at the time claimed that Tabuyen, the one ordered to treat baby Tugusir for her sickliness, intentionally failed to cure her of her weakness, to at least increase the standing of her daughters relative to the other surviving girls of the Emperor. This was harshly condemned by the Huangdi, who denied anyone the right to ever speak a word of such accusations in any of the camps, but the rumors persisted nevertheless. And it is certainly true that Tabuyen was the one who was ordered to treat Tugusir, and that relations between the Lady Siau and the Lady Dilek broke down around this time.

Another set of great games was held the following autumn to celebrate the approaching birthdays of the newest prince and princess, and thousands of Khitans from across their grazing lands poured into Emil in order to see the two babes, as well as to participate in the contests.

Naturally, even at his advanced age, Dashi was a fury on the field and in the saddle, and took home the paramount prize of the tournament. His victory was dedicated to his two youngest children, and to the continued prosperity of the Khitan people.

“In them,” he cried to his riders, “we shall place our whole future: my sons and my daughters, may they and their blood rule the Khitan people for all time!”

This was met with raucous cheers, though, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Lady Siau and the concubine Ilkay cheered with the least fervor.

Yet, again, Dashi spoke too soon. Shortly after the second birthday of little Tugusir her health took a turn for the worse, and she died in early January. As Dashi was greeted on the morn by the sound of wailing from the yurt of the Lady Dilek, he knew what had happened.

Dashi, despite his efforts to be a better man, was not often one for kind words, or even kind deeds. He did not know how to comfort a woman who had just lost a child--he was not even sure how to comfort himself. But that morning, for the first time, he tried. He went to Dilek’s yurt and held her as she wept and wailed, and he cried along with her for the loss of their little girl.

The universe had given Dashi the boy he desired, but the Huangdi did not make the rules of exchange. He begged that his family pay no price in blood, but a price had to be exacted. Little Tugusir had died so that Agdji might live.

“You must be GREAT, boy!” Dashi whispered hoarsely at his quiet toddler. “You must be great, worthy of me! You carry the price of your sister upon your head, as I do; you must be worthy of her, a successor who will shake the mountains with the thunder of your deeds! You must not fail me!”

This commandment, even if little Agdji did not understand it at the time, would follow him for the rest of his days. For, though Dashi and Dilek were those who wept that day, was it not Agdji who lost she who was closest to him, his twin?

Although he was old and Agdji was but a young child, the Huangdi’s mind had turned toward Agdji as his preferred successor not just because he forced himself to believe that the universe had taken Tugusir as a sign, but also because of the inadequacies of his first son, Belbun.

As often happened in Khitan families, when Belbun was a young lad he was left with his mother, and when he grew older he was permitted to join his father on campaign and learn in full all the skills necessary for a warrior.

Belbun was first brought on campaign with Dashi in the southern raid in 1143, when he was nine years old. Dashi was impressed at the time by his skills as a rider, but almost everything else about the boy left much to be desired. He was slow to pick up new concepts, and often when other boys mastered them more rapidly than he Belbun would beat them for embarrassing him, despite repeated attempts by Dashi to explain why calm understanding was the greater path. He could read and write well enough--bless Gonu for teaching him as much, despite how slow he could be!--but, with the exception of his willingness to fight, these were just about the only skills he had. The Emperor refrained from saying it to his face, but he considered Belbun to be a disappointment.

Even so, Dashi understood that Belbun, being more than ten years Agdji's elder, would be more likely to succeed him. And so, as Belbun aged and showed no signs of greater improvement, the Huangdi’s mind turned to finding him a good wife that could mitigate his inadequacies. Eventually, he settled on the sister of the Tibetan monarch Purgyal Tsubartsan, who had recognized Dashi’s claims and, before the Khitan exile, had a history of long communication with the Liao court. His sister, Purgyal Choden, was by all accounts an exceptional girl who would, hopefully, guide Belbun to a better path in life. If nothing else, the marriage would secure the continued friendship and cooperation of the Tibetans.

With matchmaking on the mind, the following spring House Siau is honored for its loyalty throughout the long exile by way of the marriage of Siau Uldjin, Tabuyen’s cousin, into the royal family. Yaerud Ordelhan, Dashi’s first daughter, is a shy but honorable young girl, who has never let her frail condition keep her from the tasks required of a woman of the Khitan people. As Dashi’s eldest daughter and one of his favorites, the gift is a princely one, meant to reassure Tabuyen’s family of their continued prevalence within Khitan society--what’s left of it, at any rate.

Uldjin himself is an… interesting figure. A model man and both grateful and gentlemanly to Ordelhan, he is nevertheless… a little unhinged.

“He… he sings to the stars at night, sometimes,” Ordelhan smiled, struggling not to laugh. “He chants at them, then rushes in and screams, ‘Did you hear it! They finally replied!’”

At this Ordelhan can no longer restrain herself, and she bursts into a fit of giggles, which her sisters join her in. Her mirth is infectious, and even Dashi gives in to a grin. She might be making light fun of her new husband, but if she disliked him she would not smile so; he is happy that she is pleased.

The brief happy time the Yaerud clan had found with difficulty and perseverance did not last.

The same summer that Ordelhan was married, scarcely a year and a half after the death of Tugusir, the Lady Dilek died. The Huangdi was on raid while Dilek and his other women had remained in the camp, and so all word he received of it was through messengers sent by Tabuyen. But even his wife was forced to admit she did not die naturally; poisoned roots were found in the pitcher of fermented milk she had been drinking from. She was murdered.

The Emperor was further informed that the same day that Dilek was found dead, agents of Khan Kubasar of the Qipchaqs were found in camp, spreading rumors of the incompetence of the Huangdi and his forces. They were slain, and the Empress declared that they were guilty of the death of the Lady Dilek based upon finding the same roots on their corpses.

Yet the Emperor was no fool. He loved his wife, but he was beginning to realize he could not trust her, not with her known hatred of Dilek. The Lady Gonu had recently gone mad herself, and nothing Tabuyen did could seem to cure her of her insanity. The Court was at each others’ throats, with Belbun seeking to kill Tabuyen for infecting his mother with madness, and Tabuyen, quite possibly she who murdered the Lady Dilek, being the selfsame authority organizing the investigation into her killer. All the while Ordelhan was distraught with the death of her mother, and forced to suddenly raise Agdji, her little brother, as if he were her own. She was the closest to a mother he had now.

With heavy heart, the Huangdi was forced to replace the Lady Dilek with someone entirely unfamiliar: Chechek, a stout woman of the Qipchaqs. It was said she had more than a little mannishness in her, but if so, at least she could easily overpower Tabuyen should she attack her.

The Emperor no longer trusted that his wife would not resort to such base measures. It suddenly seemed so long ago that he thought Tabueyn a pure seeker of enlightenment.

The next year Dashi spent on constant raids, as far away from his wife as possible, though upon passing briefly through Emil from the south, Dashi picked Belbun up once more and took him along, this time not just as an observer but as a sub-commander to Dashi's new flank commander, a man by the name of Telgen, Kopti's replacement. This was intended both to keep an eye on the unproven Telgen, who had previously been naught more than a rider, as well as to test Belbun's mettle. Belbun proved himself quite competent, if not exactly inventive or exceptional. In this the Huangdi was pleased, and made that clear to his son.

But it did not take long for tensions between the two men to spark, then to escalate. It began innocently enough, with Belbun insisting that his mother was unwell and requesting that Tabuyen be removed as her caretaker. To this Dashi vacillated, which led to a breach between the two men. The Huangdi initially thought it was nothing more than a brief ill-mood from his son, but rumors from Telgen’s wing, eventually confirmed by Telgen himself, that the Prince was insulting his Lord father and attempting to stir discontent about the Lady Siau’s rule forced the Emperor to intercede.

The row could be heard across the entire host, and eventually turned to violence when Belbun attempted to tackle his father. Yet even at his advanced age Dashi was fit and agile, and it was Belbun who was thrown to the ground, not his elderly father, with one hand pinned behind his back.

“I spit on you!” Belbun shouted from the ground. “You have dishonored my mother, and are a slave to the Siau! You are a weak--”

A horrible crack was heard as Dashi pulled Belbun’s shoulder from its socket, and the young man cried in agony. “I do not recall you serving, starving and dying at my side as I rode a beggar from Nanjing!” the old man screamed, as infuriated as he had ever been. “I do not recall it! You know nothing of honor, nothing of sacrifice, nothing of the memory of service rendered! Be grateful that I will not deprive my house of another child lost to tragedy! I disinherit you, you bastard-born! I name Agdji my heir!”

Of course, even the Huangdi could not simply deny the bloodright of one of his own children. Although he could make clear his preference for Agdji, Belbun was still his child and could not be disinherited. And, worse still, as by far the elder of the two boys, it was more likely than not that the riders would choose to elect Belbun upon Dashi’s death. That would be disastrous; like-as-not the wrathful cur would simply execute Tabuyen and Agdji and rule as a tyrant.

In the year-and-a-half since Dashi had dislocated Belbun’s shoulder and cast him out of the host, the boy had mostly been isolated to the environs of the camp at Emil, always under guard by Dashi’s orders. But time in the presence of his maddened mother had made him greater than Dashi had expected, bringing out a fire and determination in him that was not there when he was simply a slow little boy. He despised his father and the Siau more than ever before, and had been twice beaten badly for fomenting a rebellion against the Huangdi.

So it was that, when Belbun turned sixteen and became a man yet refused to bow before his father and ask forgiveness, Dashi felt his hand had been forced. He challenged him to a duel for the right to lead the Khitan peoples. Whichever of them drew first blood would rule, and the other would be sent into exile.

“You should not do this, Dashi,” Tabuyen had told him the night before. At the time Dashi had been furious with her questioning him, too furious to think on how strange it was for Tabuyen, of all people, to stop him from reducing the standing of his eldest son. Yet now, standing across from Belbun, he began to understand.

Tabuyen had been concerned for HIM, not Belbun.

Belbun... he looked such a man, now. He had yet to grow a beard, and his stature was clearly smaller than it would one day be, but his arms were strong and his gaze determined. He was ready to stand and fight his Lord father--and if the fire in his eyes said anything, to the death if need be. And that alone gave Dashi pause. Was he as ready to face his son?

“I expected you to still behave the coward,” the cur spat. “I remember well when you nearly broke my arm. Only fourteen I was! I expected you would only fight the weak. The only weak ones you fail to take a hand to seem to be those who deserve it--that wife of yours, for instance! I am not weak any longer, father. It is I who will break you now, and send you a pauper into the night.”

“You are young,” Dashi said mildly, “inexperienced and overconfident. I will defeat you. But for your words, you will have no forgiveness of me. I will take from you the gifts I have given, you who are ungrateful for all that I am.”

Yet now he felt fear. Not of losing, but of what victory would mean.

But there was no time to pause, to think, to cool his son's fury, to undo his rash words. The seconds signaled the fight begun, and the two men danced to each side, probing for weakness. Belbun was the first to lunge, but he over-extended, and Dashi was easily able to dodge and parry. So it went for minutes, with Belbun exerting himself while the elderly Dashi restrained himself and conserved his strength, preparing to draw first blood and end the duel.

And suddenly it was there: a perfect opportunity. Belbun overextended, and turned to strike to the left at the last moment. His entire right side was left completely open, and Dashi, like a coiled snake, struck forward….

…and his blade bit into the neck of his son, severing his head cleanly from his body. So passes Yaerud Belbun, Flame of Anger, Son of Dashi.

As the Emperor stared blankly into the lifeless eyes of his son’s head, separated by several feet from his body, his world collapsed around him. He had not meant to kill him. Belbun had jumped right at the last second, misjudging Dashi’s angle of attack, dodging directly INTO the blow, not away from it. He was inexperienced; of course it was a mistake he could make. Dashi simply hadn’t thought.

“I didn’t think,” the blood-soaked Emperor cried. “I didn’t think. I didn’t think.”

He had unwittingly repeated the same event which had destroyed House Yaerud in the first place: Tianzuo, the last Liao to rule the Middle Kingdom, had killed his son Guru-on in a fit of anger, disrupting the succession and allowing the Jurchen to dominate him. It had happened again, as in a cycle. Was he to be the cause of the death of this new beginning for his people, the Tianzuo-figure whose vile murder spelled the end of everything?

Dashi screamed out in anger, impotence and sorrow, his fingernails carving wild gashes in his face which he would wear for the remainder of his days.

Dashi sat in a near-vegetative state for days after he collapsed. Tabuyen feared that the deed had broken his mind, but eventually the Emperor returned to himself. Or, rather, what was left of him.

His eyes became hollow, his voice a whisper. His previous drive and energy were gone, and any joy he may once have felt seemed to have left him forever. He had killed his own kin, and in so doing destroyed any chance of ever cleansing himself of his sins. Whatever remainder of a life he lived was to be a purgatory.

The same night he returned to himself, he eschewed the presence of everyone and sat alone under the cold stars for several hours. Eventually, as the chill reached his bones and he finally began to feel death approaching, he said, “I understand, too late, and at too great a price. We are trapped in a cycle. We must become different before we can become what we once were again. I thank you for this knowledge,” he told the heavens, “and I curse you for it.”

He then returned to his yurt, and to his old life. But even as he went about his business, seeing to the host, holding court, negotiating a new betrothal between the Purgyal and Agdji to strengthen his son’s position, he felt sick. Nothing felt as though he deserved to pursue it any longer, even the well-being of his people. He was the actuator of so much suffering, and why? He had learned not a single lesson until it was too late, and yet had the gall to call his son slow of wit.

Although he was young and in truth quite traumatized by the sudden death both of his mother and brother, Dashi tried to make Agdji understand. “You must change us, son,” he told the little one. “You must change everything. You must make us so different that this cannot happen again.”

Agdji’s first memory of his father was the teary-eyed Emperor telling him to make good on the death of his sister by becoming a great lord, yet he was only two when his sister had died, and that memory, though precious, was ever faded and indistinct. His strongest memory of his father would always be this one: looking up at Dashi's scarred face from on his lap, watching tears stream down the furrows in his flesh, listening to his father beg him to change everything. How different might the world had been if Dashi had never told his son to do such a thing?

There was little else for the Huangdi to occupy himself with following the death of Belbun save for his family, or perhaps more accurately, the shambles of it. Although he could again try to expand the breadth of his people’s lands, it was already difficult to rule them all from Emil, and he was loathe to put into a place of power a rival clan that might stand against the elevation of Agdji to a paramount position among the Khitans; such would mean almost certain doom for his House, and would end any pretensions to possessing the mantle of the Liao. Raiding likewise held a bitter taste for him since Belbun’s death, and although he would license Ituk to undertake it on his behalf, he was not to participate in another raid in his lifetime.

The Huangdi’s life had always revolved around warfare, but now, with Belbun’s death, he was forcing himself to change his priorities. His second son was but six years old, and, with his mother dead, Dashi was determined not to make the same mistake with Agdji of leaving him alone for his formative years. He wanted to raise Agdji himself, and to be present around his family to prevent their further fracturing--and, in honesty, any designs which Tabuyen might have against his younger son.

His girls were surprised but outwardly pleased to learn that their father intended to stay with them on a more regular basis, though in private the Huangdi was certain that they feared him; none believed, as he had quietly but repeatedly insisted, that he had killed Belbun by accident.

But the worst by far was the Lady Gonu. One night, as Dashi attempted to commiserate with her on the death of their son, Gonu told him not to speak such foolishness--he would be along presently for dinner. It left him rattled; the Emperor did not know whether her denial of the truth was born of refusing to accept Belbun's death or the madness which gripped her. Whichever was true, the clear loss of her mind sent him into an even deeper depression.

Dashi’s continued presence among his family was a mixed blessing for everyone, himself included. His children did love him, but as he feared they were indeed also terrified of him, with none of them willing to accept that he did not wish, at least in some small respect, to kill Belbun. One of his concubines was insane and childless, Ilkay barely spoke any Khitan even after years of living with him, and Chechek, despite her skills, was hideous to look at, and a constant reminder of the murder of the Lady Dilek. Tabuyen was the worst of all; she genuinely loved him, and Dashi knew she did, but her ambition was so poisonous that she had deprived him of many of the same pillars upon which he had so long relied. Despite his own furious chastisem*nt of Belbun for his failure to recognize the contributions of the Siau, it was difficult, now, to look at Tabuyen and not feel as though she had grievously overstepped the bounds of his generosity.

Thus, despite Dashi’s best efforts to spend more time with his family, he could not sit still with them for long. He grew restless, and not merely for freedom from their judgmental gazes: he sought to repay another debt which he had long neglected.

Ituk, his chief bannerman and half the reason for the early successes of the Khitan host, was now a rapidly-aging man without formal House, home or a wife. He had borne all this with total silence, even after the death of his own brother reminded him that all his sacrifice could be for naught, gone over something as quick as a brief illness. But the time had come, finally, to repay the other debt which Dashi owed: a debt to the Uighur people, and to Ituk’s clan specifically. They were owed lands, power and respect within the Khitan society, and the debt would be paid. Dashi would see all his debts paid before the end.

In the early days of his campaign, unexpected word arrived at the host from Tabuyen, returned to her position of regency in Emil: she had found the artifact for which she had so long searched.

Dashi himself had forgotten. He had paid Tabuyen tremendous sums, given her control of fast riders and skilled diplomats, and angered many of his bannermen besides by giving her broad authority within the host that she might track it. Truthfully, the Huangdi had long assumed that Tabuyen had simply lied about it, manufacturing a tale of a hidden artifact in order to be given greater authority by the Huangdi. The messenger kneeling before him, bearing a great golden staff crowned by a tremendous diamond, however, showed that she had not lied, nor simply used Dashi’s naivete for her own power. She had indeed been working this whole while, and had now delivered to him a great relic of the past, a symbol of Kingship which transcended that which any Buddhist realm possessed. In any other time, it would have been cause for celebration, and an attempt to force the other Buddhists to swear even deeper fealty to the Khitan Emperor. But Dashi could not help but still feel empty, even seeing its beauty.

He looped it into his belt, eschewing greater ceremony, and sent the messenger back to Emil with words for his wife: “you are forgiven, but your deeds are not forgotten.”

As was to be expected, the Turks were utterly incapable of stopping the rampaging Khitans, and Muhammad III’s meagre host collapsed before the vicious advance of the Huangdi. Within a single year of warfare, mostly held up by long sieges, the last Uighur territories within Kucha were liberated, and a new Lord had been raised to rule there: the Lord Daerqa, none other than Ituk. He was raised to nobility, given titles and lands, permitted to retain his own rights, and even married into the Liao via Dashi’s most prestigious daughter, Yaerud Manir, the eldest child of Tabuyen. It was, in all respects, a series of gifts which were unprecedented: many Kings had been denied the same honors which were so easily given to Ituk.

“My liege,” Ituk wept as he knelt before the Huangdi in the great hall of the fortress of Kucha, “what you have done for myself and my people cannot be repaid. My only wish now is that Kopti might have lived to see this day, but even your eminence cannot reverse his passing. Know simply that, for so long as my line lasts, my House and my people will forever be the loyal servants of the true Huangdi!”

As Dashi rode away from Ituk’s restored lands back for Emil and his family, his son--the only one of them he’d brought along--spoke up. “Father, if Uncle Ituk would have done what you wanted whether you’d given him that land and big sis or not, why did you do it?”

“Debt,” Dashi replied slowly, “is a horrible thing to bear, and a worse thing to FEEL, in your soul. It is always better to give more than you ever owe. It will encourage those who serve you to suffer horribly and struggle hardily in your name, and it will have you sleep easy at night, knowing that you have slighted no man his due. Ituk and his brother are the reason we survived here for many years; they deserve everything I gave, and perhaps more. Even if he would not have complained, it is the right and honorable thing to repay him for that debt.”

Agdji's face scrunched up as the young lad struggled to understand. "So we must always do what is hon... hon-or-ble?"

As the lifeless eyes of Belbun stared at him through his mind's eye, Dashi died yet another death of his soul. "We must try," he said, struggling to keep his voice even. "Honor might only be eschewed if survival hangs in the balance. Sometimes, son, even that is not enough."

Upon his return to Emil and the uncomfortable presence of his family, Dashi began to think on Agdji’s words more seriously. There were many things, it seemed, that the boy did not truly understand about his House and his duties yet. Perhaps, Dashi thought, it would be wise to educate Agdji in more spiritual matters as well, rather than simply having him ride along on campaign.

So, with Tabuyen’s firm encouragement, Dashi made the decision to undertake a pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya, the site where the Buddha reached Enlightenment. Although the Huangdi no longer had any hope of reaching enlightenment in this life or the next, he had hopes that the intense spirituality and honored monks there might make an impression upon little Agdji, and perhaps help him along his way to enlightenment.

The Emperor and his son met many rulers and were feted as the Celestial Khan and Prince at many temples and homes on their long journey, and Agdji was always so eager to learn more of them. It was on this journey, the boy would later say, that his lifelong fascination with other faiths came to the fore. This was helped along at every step by Dashi, who was still very insistent that it must be Agdji who led the Khitan people to a new footing, one no longer rooted in the traditions of the homeland they had lost.

But eventually Bodh Gaya itself was reached, and in the gaudily-ornamented throne that sat at the center of a richly-decorated complex of blue-tiled temples, both Dashi and Agdji were struck dumb.

“It is not what I expected,” Dashi muttered to his son. “It stinks as if it were wrong.”

The gaudy presentation and ostentatious wealth had sapped from the site any feeling of true religiosity. It was no longer a shrine to Enlightenment, but a shrine to the greed and pride of man, attempting to buy enlightenment with gifts that destroy the very sense of peace which once made the place sacred. Even Agdji, young though he was, shared his father’s sentiment, wondering aloud why so much was “put in the way of just being able to sit. Wasn’t that what Buddha did here, just sit?”

So Dashi and Agdji left Bodh Gaya, and their journey instead took them to smaller temples nearby, away from the ostentatiousness of the site and instead into deep discussions of the Buddha, enlightenment, and the “desecration” of Bodh Gaya.

Although most of the long and complicated conversations were far too complex for Agdji to understand, his strongest memory of that time would be of his father arguing in calm but forceful tones with monks who had, by all rights, studied the faith for far longer than he had. Yet his sense of betrayal at being unable to find what it was that he sought there lit a fire in him so forceful that, even if the monks cried out against his interpretation, he felt all the more certain that his interpretation was correct.

Eventually Dashi and Agdji simply left, quietly making the return trip to Emil. The journey did not have the purpose Dashi had hoped it would, but it did cause him to examine his faith more closely. Action an intent were imbricated; Belbun’s death, the great failure and tragedy which loomed over his life, was still his fault. But the deed, on its own, was not absolute. Belbun's death was also an accident--tragic and unrecoverable, permanent as all death is, yet unintended. There could not be forgiveness for Dashi, but there did not need to be. Because Bodh Gaya reminded Dashi of the very premise of the spirituality he had found so late in life: there is more than one life, more than one chance. This life was still empty, but there was always hope for him in the next. One day he would return, and he would do better.

Long years passed after Dashi's return with little change. Finally content in his realization that his present life had no value but to serve as the basis from which Agdji might grow, Dashi no longer feared to be in the presence of his family, and he spent the time he had left with them gladly. He endured Tabuyen’s duplicity, the madness of Gonu, and the ugly behavior of Chechek and Ilkay without comment. He taught his daughters as best he could, and earnestly attempted to make them understand what it was he had learned at the outskirts of Bodh Gaya: that it was intent and deed both that caused an action to have weight, and unless both were in harmony, your decisions would always lead you astray. For all of his efforts, though, it appeared that only Agdji, who had been there with him, truly learned the lesson.

Still, failure did not sting the Huangdi in these, his twilight years. He had come to terms with his life and his failings, and dedicated his last days to peace, and to teaching Agdji about his responsibilities and what it meant to be Huangdi. It would be a lie to say there was not real joy in his life in these years, as well--it was fleeting, as it was still difficult to put his heart in anything even with the reconciliation he had made unto himself, but his grandsons, Uldjin and Sugr, showed him yet another truth: the world would continue. The Siau and Daerqa would continue just as the Yaerud would, and, through his generous gifting of his daughters, his blood would be in all of them. The Liao would go on, and the same Houses that had made their survival possible would go along with them.

Thus it was that, though he failed to achieve enlightenment, in his final days Yaerud Dashi achieved peace.

In the Year of Our Lord 1154, on the 18th of October, Yaerud Dashi passed from this earth in his sleep. He was known by many names in his long life: the Spring of Hope; The Seeker of the Next Mountain; He Who Holds the Threads; the Celestial Khan. In death, none of these names would do him justice; though his people had feared him following his murder of Belbun, even then they universally acknowledged his mastery of war and the sacrifices he had made for them, and knew well that everything that they were, indeed even their very survival, was a result of his great skill and dedication, extricating his people from their doomed state in the Middle Kingdom and bringing them here to their new hope, far away. So it was that Dashi earned his memory among them, an almost mythical figure whose name would be remembered as a whispered rumor of a glorious past long after his true life was forgotten: Yaerud Dashi, Father Khitan.

Chapter 2: The Bringer of Change, Pt. I - Returning to a Home Before Unseen

Chapter Text

The heir to the Imperial title is of course Dashi's second (and sole surviving) son, Yaerud Agdji, proclaimed Huangdi of the Liao Dynasty the same day of Dashi’s death. While Dashi was proclaimed Huangdi at an advanced age, taking the title at forty following the death of the previous Emperor Tianzuo, Agdji now suffers the opposite fate: he has been made Huangdi at a very tender age indeed, merely ten years old.

His youth is sadly exacerbated by his temperament. Despite his ostensible training in warfare and accompanying his father on campaign, Agdji is an introspective and shy boy, fascinated by the world around him but uncomfortable with its people. This behavior is unbecoming in the Huangdi, especially a child-emperor who must immediately encourage his men to have faith in him. Instead of this the young Agdji cannot hide the tears he weeps for his father, and a disgusted Khitan host is forced to consider whether or not betraying Dashi by deposing their weak Emperor might not be the best course of action. Father Khitan’s memory is strong enough that they do not dare yet, but it is a perilous start for Dashi’s son, and a frightening portent of what may lie ahead should Agdji prove incapable of conquering his sorrow and becoming his own man. Thankfully, even with Dashi’s death Ituk’s loyalty to Father Khitan is absolute, and the Lord Daerqa takes it upon himself to raise young Agdji on his Dashi’s behalf. Ituk’s skill in war was greater even than that of Dashi, and it is hoped by the host that Ituk can make a man of Agdji.

Ituk’s support of Agdji is not the final word, however: Siau Tabuyen, the famous (if unproven) murderer, she who despises all those sons born to Dashi, is by Dashi’s will proclaimed to be Agdji’s Regent. Agdji must now not merely thrive as a new ruler--he must survive Tabuyen.

Although his first months are spent overwhelmed, vacillating between calm composure and breaking down in grief at the death of his father all while being pulled this way and that between the interests of Ituk and Tabuyen, as time passes Agdji is finally able to gain greater control of himself. He is still a quiet and rather timid child, but his responsibilities weigh more clearly on him, and he begins to understand what is required of himself as Huangdi. Never before did the title mean as much to him as it does now, with its weight upon his shoulders.

Although the ever-spiteful Tabuyen does her best to isolate as many decisions as possible from Agdji and maintain control of the little power she has left for as long as she can, she cannot keep him from everything. When monks from the monastery where Dashi spent most of his year in isolation arrive in Emil requesting aid, they refuse to speak to the Regent and instead demand to plead their case directly to “the blood of our blood.”

The young Huangdi, in honor of his father’s memory and their journey together to Bodh Gaya, decides to spend a significant sum of the host’s limited resources to finance the monastery, although, remembering his father’s words well, Agdji stipulates that the money cannot be used for idols or figures of his father or himself. The monks are surprised but pleased at this “most noble” of restrictions, and do homage to the wisdom of the young Huangdi.

Despite Ituk’s best efforts to teach Agdji the ways of war, constant interference from Tabuyen--as well as, it must be admitted, a good deal of resistance from Agdji himself--has resulted in the young Huangdi being no more prepared to fight two years after his ascension than he was when he first came to the throne.

“Huangdi,” Ituk told him carefully, “your father had a very clear plan for you. Whether it was all correct or not I cannot say; Lord Dashi was fallible, even if he had a remarkable way of turning affairs to his advantage. But he was not wrong to believe that you must be a man of war if your people are to have any chance of survival. You might think your lands are vast, so vast that you have not seen even a small portion of them, but compared to the great realms on the horizon--and indeed from all I have heard this is true of the ancestral lands of your House as well--they are tiny. Your people grow slowly, and your strength of arms is not sufficient to resist those who will seek to conquer you. The Khitan host must expand, and to do so they must have a ruler with the power to conquer for them. If they do not, my Lord, I will not lie to you: they will find one, and the memory of Lord Dashi will not restrain them.”

“Father wished me to change everything,” Agdji told Ituk, just as carefully. “He told me this many times. Why, then, should I be a warrior as he was, as Belbun was? It would not bring us to change.”

Ituk bit his lip--the boy was taking Dashi too literally, and it could spell the end of the Khitan. He had to be convinced to learn war, and that mean Ituk had to say anything necessary to earn Agdji's willing compliance.

The Lord Daerqa was silent for a very long while before he finally chose the angle of his argument. “Lord Agdji, you cannot become different here. This is the same place that your father fled to and fought over, on the very cusp of your ancestral lands. You must move on, and to do that you must expand. You need not fight or conquer in the same way that Lord Dashi did, but nevertheless… you must fight.”

Agdji was still for a very long time, but slowly he nodded. “So be it--teach me of war.”

Ituk would live long enough to realize the tremendous impact his words would have, both upon Agdji and the Khitan as a whole.

A month after Agdji began training with Ituk in earnest, word reached the Huangdi from the main camp that Dashi’s second concubine and the mother of his half-brother Belbun, the Lady Gonu, had finally died. Word was that she had suddenly clutched at her heart and passed from this world, still certain that Belbun was not dead at all, and awaiting his return.

Although the Lady Siau’s report again indicated no foul play, the situation reeked of it. The Lady Dilek, his own mother, had been murdered under similar circ*mstances. Agdji had long given Tabuyen the same benefit that his father had--he was not SURE she was guilty, and even if she were, his house owed much to hers--but this was a step too far, and no longer could Agdji deny that his Regent was almost certainly complicit in, even if not necessarily responsible for, the death of both his mother and the mother of his departed half-brother.

Although by Dashi’s command Tabuyen could not be removed from her position as Regent, the Huangdi ordered that she immediately be stripped of all rights to treat the royal family for illnesses as their principal physician. She was replaced in this role by the wise Yaerud An, the son of Baish, Dashi’s disgraced one-time concubine. As a distant relation and son of Yaerud Sabon--Uncle Sabon, Agdji called him--who was a friend to Agdji, the Huangdi was certain that An would serve faithfully… and, importantly, protect him from the poisons of Tabuyen.

Furious at the insult to her honor and her power that Agdji’s orders had inflicted upon her, Tabuyen ordered that Agdji immediately return to Emil and be retained in her presence rather than “riding freely with the Lord Daerqa, being poisoned with lies and deceit.”

The proclamation finally broke the tense peace between the three of them. Tabuyen had utilized her power as Regent to directly countermand the orders of the Huangdi, and in the same breath had all but accused Ituk of treason, a man who every rider of the host knew would rather take his own life than sully the memory of Dashi. As Tabuyen armed the women of the camps and Ituk prepared his host to ride on Emil, it seemed that the situation would descend into bloody civil war.

Until Agdji passively ordered Ituk to stand down, and rode alone back to Emil.

No record is preserved of the conversation which Agdji had with his Regent, but when he left her yurt, the three of them had come to an agreement: Tabuyen would be retained as regent, and Agdji would spend one-half of the year in Emil and one-half of the year traveling with Ituk, learning the ways of war. It seemed to the Khitan people a tremendous feat of diplomacy which proved, finally, that Agdji was the right man to rule them.

In reality, it was a bare threat. Agdji proved to her that, though he was of Dashi’s blood, he was NOT Dashi, and would not take her petty ambitions lying down; he openly accused her of guilt in the death of his mother, and presented her with two options: be remembered as the Mother of the Khitans, or be remembered for being burned alive upon the ascension of the second Emperor, her name stricken from the record and replaced with that of the Lady Dilek. Faced with honor and a bare shred of power and the alternative of utter humiliation, Tabuyen finally folded to her beloved husband’s son, and Agdji was left utterly unchallenged as Huangdi.

The rest of Agdji’s adolescence, compared to the tumultuous years of his early reign and the standoff between Tabuyen and Ituk, was calm. On his raids with Ituk he learned the ways of warfare, becoming proficient if not exceptional with the use of the cavalry spear which his father had favored, while becoming more than a little bit a womanizer in the time spent at camp.

Agdji did not hate women, but he was shy and unsure around them. Nevertheless, the trauma of House Yaerud that had resulted from Dashi’s lack of sons was burned firmly into Agdji’s mind, and he was determined not to permit the same trauma to rear its head again during his rule. But even as he "practiced" begetting sons, he felt insecure around the opposite sex. Although by the time Agdji was fourteen there were already a "few" girls in the camp who could claim that the child they carried might have been the Huangdi’s (though the Emperor did not recognize any of these petty bastards as his own), none of the women he got his bastards on saw an Agdji who was firm and in control, but instead an awkward, young teenager--though they were rarely any less awkward and uncertain.

For the moment, it was just the harmless fun of youth. Although he legitimized none of his bastards, he was kind, if cautious, around the women he fathered them on, and if in the future he saw boys he thought might be his own among the host, he would stop and speak with them for a while. But never did he even hint to them that they might be his own blood: he always firmly maintained the idea that he should await the opportunity to sire a son on a highborn woman before affixing the honor of being named a Yaerud to them.

Early in the year where he would reach his maturity, another matter of concern is brought to Agdji’s attention: the unmarried status of his sisters.

Both Sinelgen and Harur, the two youngest of Agdji’s elder sisters, were still unwed, and there were no more among the clans whom the Yaerud owed favors or debt; the Siau had been repaid more than they deserved, and there was none other of Ituk’s blood to marry. Worse still, there were precious few Buddhists who were in regular contact with the Khitan host, and fewer still who truly deserved to be honored with an Imperial marriage.

Eventually, in cautious cooperation with Tabuyen (Sinelgen being her daughter), Agdji came to the conclusion that the Purgyal of Tibet would make the best match for them. Already destined to be tied to the Huangdi through marriage, the marriage of the Emperor’s sisters to other scions of the Purgyal would further tie the two dynasties together and ensure perpetual cooperation between the two families, which might well be critical should an invasion of the Middle Kingdom somehow come to pass within his lifetime.

So it was that Yaerud Sinelgen was married to Purgyal Tsanphyugide, son and heir of a great lord of the realm, while Yaerud Harur was betrothed to Purgyal Trimang, grandson of the Tibetan Kings and a current lord of the realm. Along with these women came promises of eternal aid and alliance from the Tibetans, which Ituk made certain they were aware they would be held to strictly. They had received a great gift for being such a small dynasty.

At the end of the year, upon reaching the age of sixteen, Huangdi Agdji is finally regarded as having come of age, and, with his ascension, the time of Tabuyen’s dominance of the Khitan people is over. Agdji son of Dashi and his descendants will now rule, and any last schemes that Tabuyen may have been fomenting have been dashed. Forced into retirement at the monastery near the camp at Emil and replaced as Regent by Ituk, Tabuyen will forever be honored for her role by the legendary Dashi’s side--but quietly, and with reservation.

Now having ascended to his title in full, the day is Agdji’s. Despite his success, however, the young man cannot help but feel somewhat hollow. Even with all of Ituk’s training, it is whispered among the camps that Agdji is but a pale imitation of his brother Belbun, who had greater natural skill not only in war, but in personal combat. Agdji is mocked for his fumbling understanding of warfare despite his astute mind (when, it is noted, Belbun was more accomplished despite being notably slow of wit), while more than a few of the wrestlers in the camp note that their new Huangdi is surprisingly easy to defeat in personal combat despite his unusual strength, which even Dashi remarked upon.

These rumors were undoubtedly started (or at least helped along) by Tabuyen, but they sting Agdji deeply, conscious as he is of his father’s hopes in him to be the savior of their house and the inheritor of Belbun’s responsibilities. If Agdji is to have the respect of his people--or indeed, to have any peace himself--they must be quieted.

The first step in this is in some ways the most unpleasant, as Agdji must submit himself to the potential factionalism of yet another group of concubines. Yet it is well-known that Dashi, despite not being a lustful man, kept many women about him to support him, and won many of them in war; this is now expected of Agdji, and as Agdji requires both many sons and satiation of his great lust, it is all the more important that he take them quickly.

So it is that the same ceremony which sees his full ascension to the throne also brings the acknowledgement of his first concubines, Asli Kucet and Sevindik Aepakid. The former is the chief of the two, and is the sister of one of the northern Khans, regarded as a fierce rider in her own right and a worthy woman born of noble stock, though her propensity to cruelty and deceit make her a serious threat to his other concubines; Agdji will watch her closely.

Sevindik is of much less notable stock, being the child of a minor court official of Muhammad III, and is regarded with even less respect due to her adherence to the Muslim creed, which, ever since their first defeat of the Qarluqs, the Khitans have looked down upon as a weak faith. Nevertheless she was won in war and is an honorable conquest, and Agdji has decided to retain her service for the time being.

Of course, proving virility only places a bandage upon insulted pride, it does not cure it. In order to prove his prowess, the Huangdi calls for a great riding competition celebrating his ascension, to be held at the first sign of warm weather.

In early spring, at first signs of the frost’s thaw, the games begin. With Ituk sitting out on complaints of poor health it is little surprise that his apprentice would sweep the contest, and Agdji does just that, securing great wealth and a tremendous restoration of his blunted prestige. The riders who once whispered about the weakness of the Huangdi now no longer dare to complain about his prowess, for, before their entire people, the Emperor has proven his undeniable skill.

The victory in the tournament was actually quite unanticipated to Agdji; he had assumed he would lose either to Ituk, whom he did not know was not participating until the day the contest began, or to one of his distant cousins, whom Dashi had trained in the affairs of war long before even Belbun was born. But he underestimated his own skill, just as the rest of the riders of the Khitans had over-estimated the skill of Belbun, whose gruesome death had seared an otherwise-unremarkable son into their memory. Agdji was his superior in almost every sense, and even for those in which he was not, it was certain that, given time, he would surpass his deceased half-brother.

Regardless, the victory is a great boon. It gives Agdji exactly the amount of leverage over his people that he needs in order to move forward with the first step of his grand design, and far sooner than he had first anticipated.

Ituk met with Agdji in his yurt on an evening in the late spring. It was hot inside, scorching even, yet Agdji refused to open any of its many flaps, or to meet with Ituk until Ituk promised to send his own guardsmen to keep watch on the Yurt. Ituk first thought Agdji was becoming paranoid, until he heard the young Huangdi’s words.

“You wish to return to the Middle Kingdom?” Ituk whispered urgently, his eyes bulging.

“Not return,” Agdji answered slowly, “for I have never been there. My father spoke of all the glories of the Middle Kingdom, of great paved roads and cities holding so many thousands that they are uncountable. He spoke often of their machines of war, their art and their culture, even their writings. But I have never seen any of it for myself, Ituk.

“It is not easy for me. I am the Huangdi, and I am told that my birthright is in the east; so be it, I accept that. But I am also now the Khan of my people, a people who are estranged from that birthright. I am told that it is my duty to march east and reconquer my birthright, and I accept that as well. But how am I to conquer a land which I have never seen, filled with peoples who I do not know and with strength I cannot estimate, with what little of us remain? Perhaps my father could have done it, given time. Without knowing of the strength and nature of the Qin, I cannot. I do not even know what we once were, and without knowing our past I cannot shape our future.”

“And so you intend to march into their capital, as a man of the Liao dynasty, and expect to simply be let free?” Ituk scoffed. “They will capture you, they will hold you, and they may even kill you. And, should you die, what would happen to your people then? Tabuyen, so recently defeated, would return and destroy your entire Dynasty, rising the Siau in their place.”

“That is why I have come to you,” Agdji nodded at his mentor. “You are now Regent, and you must prevent Tabuyen returning to power. I do not think the Qin will hold me; the word we have from the east is of unrest within their realm, which is precisely why I intend to send my embassy now. They will be weakened, and more pliant to negotiation.”

“Negotiation?” Ituk countered. “That does not sound of reconnaissance.”

Agdji’s lips pursed in a grimace, but he nodded. “It’s true. We are trapped here, isolated and abreast of the Qin’s Mongol vassals. They have not raided us yet, blessedly, but they might at any time. A ceasefire until we can grow in power would be prudent, and it might be possible to make the Qin Emperor agree to this at a time when the supplication of the Liao would do much to strengthen his faltering Dynasty.”

Ituk’s eyes bulged anew, and his voice grew so venomous that Agdji truly wondered whether his most loyal servant would raise his weapon against him. “You would bow before him? You dishonor the name of your father!”

“I know,” Agdji nodded, utterly calm despite--or perhaps exactly because of--the finality of his decision. Suddenly, Ituk was reminded strongly of Dashi, and it seemed the old man was almost sitting before him again, merely in the garb of the younger. “That is what my Lord father wished of me," Dashi-Agdji said. "He ordered me to change everything, Lord Daerqa. This is the most painful, but also most prudent, place to begin.”

"If you are truly Dashi's son as I know you to be," Ituk told the boy, "you will do as you wish regardless of my advice. And I see in you now an image of Dashi: his wisdom, but also his uncanny skill at bending events to his will. If you are his son in more than blood, you will have victory. And if you are not, if you are but a pale imitation, then the Liao will be rendered into nothing, and you will have killed the last of what your father left behind. If you are truly so confident in your choice, then go forth--you will prove through your success that you are the true son of your father."

Two emissaries of the Liao dynasty were sent forth ahead of the Huangdi: one of his aged generals, Adigh, who wished to see his home again, and one Baisbun, a Buddhist ascetic which agreed to serve as the Huangdi’s personal emissary to the Qin Emperor, and to serve the Qin going forward as a sign of good faith. They would alert the Qin Huangdi of the imminent arrival of the Lord of the Liao, riding forth from his home on the steppes to perform the most disgraceful act which Dashi could ever have imagined a Yaerud submitting to: the kowtow.

Although preparations for the Huangdi’s journey began the very same day, it took months to gather the provisions, trusted soldiers, and trade goods which it was expected that the Emperor would need on his journey into the Middle Kingdom. Beyond that, the extremely indignant Khitan people needed to be mollified that this did not mean the end of the Liao--this was to be a personal meeting between the Qin Emperor and the Liao Emperor, admittedly not as equals, but nevertheless with both sides recognizing the Imperial status of the other. Although it would shame Agdji personally, it would also give the Liao legitimacy to be recognized as an “empire of the west” by the Qin. It took months, but by carefully emphasizing how this mission would prepare the Liao to strike, eventually most of the Khitan people were brought to agree with it, or at least silence their dissent. Tabuyen was practically hissing from within her prison-monastery, but for so long as the Lord Daerqa ruled in his absence, Agdji had little need to fear a resurgence of Siau power.

In late summer the host finally set off, with assurances that they would return with the ire of the great Middle Kingdom abated--at least for the moment.

Of course, that was not all that Agdji wished to achieve. The Lord Daerqa had weaseled out the true intent of the young Huangdi: an alliance with the Middle Kingdom in all but name, and the forsaking of the Liao birthright for so long as the Qin reigned. The very idea was so anathema to Dashi’s wishes that Ituk had been forced to denounce the deed, but Agdji proceeded with it regardless, such was his determination to free the Khitans of their “neverending slavery to the idea that we must return east at the first opportunity, even at the risk to all that we are.”

As Ituk watched Agdji’s host shrink and eventually disappear on the horizon, the old man could only shake his head. “I hope,” he murmured to himself, “that the boy knows what it is he hopes to accomplish. I certainly do not.”

The road to the Middle Kingdom was a long one. Based upon his father’s compendium, The Glory and Fall of the Khitan, it had taken some eight years to travel from the original homeland of their people to their new home. Yet that was with a great host, harried at every turn and forced to take circuitous, untested paths to hide from enemies. More importantly, Dashi's host did not know its final destination and stopped frequently, attempting to find refuge in many realms, including on the fringes of the Xia Empire, on the way. Those who knew the land well guessed that, on a march directly to the heartlands of the Qin, a well-appointed but small party might make the trip in less than a year, although it might be slower in this time of tumult.

So indeed it proved to be. The journey was long, and if not overly perilous, then at least quite boring after a time. The guards Agdji had with him approved of him as Huangdi, but they were chosen specifically for their loyalty, and this tended to stem from viewing him as the near-divine offspring of the absolutely-divine Dashi. They did not like speaking to him in anything but polite and short sentences, and so it was that many days saw Agdji alone with his thoughts. It was worst on those days when it poured rain, which happened with surprising frequency. Dilek had died on a stormy day, and it was difficult for Agdji to control his tears when he was confronted with the memory of her passing; it, like his father’s death, was still raw for him even after many years. He was sure his only remaining full-blooded sister, Ordelhan, felt the same. Upon a time, when they were both much younger, they had cried together over her death. It saddened Agdji even now to think of what his sister had been put through in being forced to raise him as well as her own son, Uldjin.

But his men were good enough to ignore his tears, and he was good enough to put on a few shows of strength for them in exchange. The roads, once they were reached, were infested with bandits--it seemed the Qin were in a state of tumult indeed. These Agdji all faced personally, partly to ensure the continued loyalty of his people, but also partly to find peace from his own emotions.

As the Huangdi drew closer and closer to the Qin capital at Kaifeng, the riches and power of the Middle Kingdom began to become all the more apparent. There were fewer bandits upon the road, then eventually none at all. Every town Agdji’s retinue entered had been made fully aware of his coming, and, by order of the Qin Emperor, he always stayed in the most richly-appointed homes with no shortage of food, drink or women for his desires. His escort soon became dwarfed by an honorary guard 1,000 men strong sent to guide him directly to Kaifeng and the Emperor.

This honor-guard was something of a double-edged sword for the Qin Emperor, however. Although it was intended to ensure that the Lord Liao would not try anything within his territory, the nobility of the Liao dynasty spoke both the Khitan tongue and the language of the court fluently, and indeed there were many among the group of guards who were northerners and could have understood Agdji even if he had only spoken Khitan. The escort which was supposed to have constrained Agdji and brought him straight to Kaifeng instead became quite friendly with him, and were content to dawdle at points if the Huangdi had a particular interest in sightseeing or exploration.

Agdji explored many towns, shrines and even garrisons in this manner, his guards excusing his entry as a foreign dignitary and guest of the Emperor. He learned much, not least about the strength of the Middle Kingdom and how hopeless it was for the Khitans, as they were now, to think of standing against their might. But there were other, more practical concerns as well; upon a time, Agdji spent a great deal of the trade goods he had brought with him to purchase a compendium of Qin medical knowledge which a healer in his party informed him contained new and interesting secrets unknown to the healers which the Liao had been able to spirit out of the Middle Kingdom. It was a small gap closed, but, with his father’s death fresh on his mind, one he felt important to address.

Eventually, however, it could no longer be delayed. The road to Kaifeng grew shorter and shorter, and the Emperor’s agents less and less patient. Not wishing to cause a diplomatic break with the Qin before recognition had even been extended, Agdji was personally rushed, alone, to Kaifeng at the end of May, his own honor guard beginning the long trek back to Khitan lands without him. When the Huangdi finally caught back up with them on the edge of Mongol territory (his speed owing to a small stable of fast horses the Qin Emperor had gifted him), he told his people immediately of their meeting.

Shizu was an old man at 56 years of age, but skilled in war and politics, exemplified by his rapid rise in power. He had balanced the Qin between the remnants of the Jurchen, the strength of the Mongols, the still-rebellious Xia, and the strong Song dynasty to the south. Although his realm was fractured by lawlessness and infighting as his Dynasty prosecuted a serious war with the Song, his power was still entirely self-evident, and upon being granted audience to the chambers of the Qin Emperor, Agdji knew that he must humble himself by performing the kowtow, which he did without being prompted.

Yet, in a surprising turn of events, rather than being required to shame himself further by requesting an audience of the Qin Emperor, the Lord Qin ordered all his ministers save for his chief eunuch to leave the chamber, and gave audience to Agdji of his own accord!

“I take note of you, Agdji son of Dashi. Your father raided our shared enemies during his reign, and ceased upon my ascension to the Dragon Throne. You come now to pay obeisance, and to renounce your claims to the Mandate of Heaven and the Middle Kingdom. Heaven sees your humility and cannot but be pleased by it.”

“You are correct in all counts save for one, Emperor,” Agdji replied. “I do not renounce my title. I am still Huangdi, the Lord Liao. I have come to negotiate, not to abandon the work of my father’s life.”

Agdji’s proclamation of the continuation of the Liao dynasty in the very chambers of the Lord Qin was perhaps the most reckless decision he ever made--a bold claim indeed, given the future destined for the young man. Guards were but mere meters away, separated by walls thick enough to shut out normal speech, but thin enough to register shouting. The Qin Emperor could have merely shouted for his guards, and so would end the Liao Dynasty.

But he did not, at least not immediately--he hesitated. And so Agdji’s suspicions were proven true.

“We both possess things which the other needs desperately,” Agdji rushed on. “I have already sent you tokens of the goodwill of the Liao which I hope have proven our worth to you: Adigh to wage your wars, and Baisbun to give you sage advice. More than this we might provide for you: horses from our herds, a watch upon your Mongol vassals to the east. Perhaps one day a woman of my own House to serve as a wife to your heirs. But most of all, my Lord: legitimacy and security.

“What I propose, in this most tumultuous of times for both of our Dynasties, is mutual recognition. The Liao will acknowledge the Qin as the undisputed masters of the Middle Kingdom; without renouncing our claims, we will acknowledge that those claims are superseded by the rights of the Qin, and we will accept any emissaries you should wish to send into our lands to confirm our continued adherence to this principal. We will swear never to wage war against the Qin, and to help preserve their reign for so long as we are able. In return, the Qin will acknowledge the Liao Dynasty’s Imperial right in the west, and will neither order harm to us nor sanction it. Rather than foes we shall become as brother Houses, the Liao in the West and the Qin in the East.”

The Qin Emperor was silent for a while, his piercing gaze sizing Agdji up from all angles. Eventually he asked, “how much of your herd might you provide us?”

“Over a tenth of my personal stock,” Agdji answered without hesitation.

Silence reigned for almost another full minute before the Lord Qin ordered the gong next to him to be rang, and soldiers poured into the room from all sides.

At first, Agdji told his riders, he believed that the signal had meant his doom, and he sprung to his feet, prepared to fight to the death. But the Qin Emperor gestured him to stillness, and called him forward. Then, in the presence of the assembled royal guards, Shizu reached out and touched Agdji’s forehead, and intoned, “I see here the Lord Liao, Emperor of the West.” Agdji answered him immediately by performing the kowtow once more, intoning with bowed head, “I see here the Lord Qin, Emperor of the East, Interlocutor of Heaven and Master of the Middle Kingdom.”

So, with much shock and indeed indignation on both sides, the Liao and the Qin Dynasties recognized one another’s rights in their respective domains. Upon returning to the Khitan host and informing them of his journey and deeds in the Middle Kingdom, Agdji ordered that the first tributes of horses to the Qin should begin immediately, that they might not think themselves slighted.

“Must we move ahead with this so quickly?” Ituk asked, clear disgust dripping from his words. “I still do not approve of this, and your father would--”

“My father is dead,” Agdji said softly. “I know your loyalty was to him, Lord Daerqa, but his request of me was clear. This will bring security to our people for what is to come. You have not seen the realms of the Qin, but I have--I made the right decision. You must trust me in this. My father was prepared to fight other nomads, the Jurchen… I do not think he was prepared to fight what I witnessed.”

“Then all you have done is bought us complacency,” Ituk countered.

“What I have bought,” Agdji replied, “is peace to the east. We shall have war, a great many wars, to the west. And soon.”

Chapter 3: The Bringer of Change, Pt. II - A Return to Barbarism

Chapter Text

The following day, the Huangdi called one of his concubines, Asli Kucet, to his yurt. She was a Qipchaq woman, but most importantly, she was a Tengri Rider. She knew things which Agdji must also know, and, having spent a long while among the Khitans, her knowledge of their tongue was passable.

“I have learned,” Agdji told her as she sat before him, “on my journey into the Middle Kingdom that my own people were once riders before we conquered the Han. We behaved then much as we do now, but I heard it said by the Qin that we believed in Father Sky, Tengri, as you do, and so too the Mongols and Jurchen.”

“I do not know the Jurchen, but I know the Mongol,” Asli’s face contorted in a grimace. “Yes, they believe as we, with some difference.”

“I wish to know of Father Sky,” Agdji admitted. “My father wanted me to change the Khitan, and I believe that means we must leave behind most of what we are, but not necessarily what we once were. We could return to that faith and not betray ourselves.”

To his surprise, however, Asli shook her head. “I am not good to teach. I follow Tengri because of his commands: death to enemies, the strong prevail. I can tell you the names of Gods, their power and their deeds, but I cannot tell you how to make pacts with them, to praise them, to make your people Tengri’s.”

“Who might, then?” Agdji leaned in.

Asli bit her lip, but eventually nodded to herself. “There are riders called Berkutchi. They are the best of us, in war, in fighting, in hunting. They are the best of Tengri. They will accept you, as the Celestial Khan. Join with them, and they will teach you.”

Agdji took Asli’s words to heart, and, travelling to the nearby Qipchaq lands with only a small honor guard, sought rumor of the group. It was reported that a few of their number were hunting nearby, and after a brief search Agdji found their camp. He promptly requested of the assembled warriors to be inducted into the Berkutchi by right of his blood, and his title as Celestial Khan.

The hunters laughed at him and called his faith too soft for them, but an infuriated Agdji threw himself from his saddle and grasped the spear of his father. "I have not had love for my creed since I saw its sins at Bodh Gaya," the Huangdi spat. "I am ready to bring my people back to the old ways. But if you are so cowardly to deny my challenge, I will seek Gods with mightier followers. Perhaps the Muslims will oblige?”

This properly got a rise out of the assembled warriors, and no less than ten stood and immediately issued challenges to the Celestial Khan. Agdji picked out the strongest among them to duel, but even then he succeeded in disarming and badly wounding the man--Khubasar was his name--with not a single blow taken himself. This caused those few who still had not taken him seriously among them to sit up and take notice, and they made a space for him at their fire.

The oldest of them, one Etrek, nodded slowly. “You aren’t much to look at, but you might become something, some day. We will teach you of Father Tengri through our deeds, and you will learn the old strength of your blood.”

The following spring, a great procession from Tibet is escorted to the Emil river basin by the Khitan host, bearing the Lady Purgyal. Though Kyi is of the blood of Kings, she was of lesser rank than Purgyal Choden, who was the princess whom Belbun was to marry upon a time; the Purgyal did not trust Dashi with a child of their royal line after he murdered his own son. Kyi, a granddaughter of a King rather than a princess herself, was the greatest offering they were willing to provide.

They have warm relations with Agdji, however, and send Kyi to him with great fanfare and respect for one who is the guardian of the Buddha’s earthly remains, and a pilgrim to Bodh Gaya besides. How they would rage if they knew how little faith he placed in their beliefs.

Upon finally meeting the Lady at the outskirts of his camp, Agdji is struck by many things at once. Kyi is both strong of body and possesses an ingratiating personality, which the Huangdi approves of. But in many other ways she is… disappointing. Despite his best efforts not to think of his wife-to-be in such a way, she is simply unpleasing to his eyes; she barely speaks the courtly language of the Khitan, the pidgin of the Middle Kingdom (and none of the Khitan tongue that has become the lingua franca among the host); and she is devoutly Buddhist, which Agdji fears might lead to serious problems as he prepares to move his host back to their ancient ways.

Nevertheless, there is no other prospect. Unless the Huangdi were to marry one of his own riders, which would be an extremely unusual and base prospect for a Liao, there are no other marriageable candidates. And so the Emperor marries Kyi--if not without personal misgivings.

Despite her lifelong preparation to be married to the Huangdi, however, Kyi is still but a young girl, one used to settled life and uncomfortable around a nomadic people, even if the Khitan are still some of the most “settled” of the nomads on the steppe. Her nature as a dedicated and outgoing young woman serves her well and she adapts quickly, but for several months her time with the Emperor is limited, and she spends more time learning to adapt to life on the move than learning to live with Agdji, of whom she still knows little.

This is not contrary to the wishes of the Emperor, however, who spends the summer months riding, training and speaking with Asli, in preparation for his imminent conversion--and therefore, de facto, the conversion of the entire Khitan host--to the faith of great Tengri.

Eventually, after months of learning and living the life of a true nomad and worshipper of the Great Sky, Agdji judges that the time is right to finally profess his conversion to the Khitan people as a whole. But he does not make the mistake that he feels his father Dashi would have; he does not make the decision alone.

Rather, he gathers together Asli, Kyi, and Sevindik--respectively a Tengri, a Buddhist and a Muslim--and informs them of his intent. He does not ask their blessing, but, in a move Dashi never would have contemplated, does request their acknowledgement.

Asli naturally gives her support, and an apathetic Sevindik professes that she does not care. But, in the first real show of the kind of woman she was, Kyi refuses to acknowledge the conversion until her husband gives his assurances that she will be permitted to keep her faith, and that the Buddhist artifacts which lie in the possession of the Yaerud will be transferred to the Purgyal, so that they might take the position of stewardship which the Liao were now abandoning. To this, Agdji assented.

This was not to say that Kyi was tolerant of her husband’s conversion; far from it. Not only did she fail to understand or accept his reasons for converting, she also felt cheated by the timing of the revelation, betrayed in that she expected to spend her lifetime joined to a fellow seeker of enlightenment, and discouraged over the imminent Khitan abandonment of the Buddha’s wisdom. But she was a wise enough woman to pick her battles, and would continue to prove her shrewd political calculations going forward. She knew when she could not resist the will of the Huangdi.

That same afternoon, before the great assembled host of the Khitan people Huangdi Agdji spoke the words which he had long believed, but had never before been able to announce:

“I reject the wisdom of the Buddha! I reject our corrupted past! Enlightenment is a beautiful principal, and perhaps one day attainable; yet the pursuit of enlightenment, a life lived in palaces and books, drove us to weakness, lost us our homes, and set us to an exile that will last decades, if indeed not centuries! My father told me to change the Khitan people, to break the shackles of the mind that tie us to these traditions that weaken us, so that we might once again learn strength, and return to the Middle Kingdom with the power we once held.

“Faith in Tengri, the Great Sky above, was the belief of our ancestors! It is the belief of many of you now, riders from the far north who joined us in exile, and remember the old ways. If we are to have strength, this is how we must achieve it: to turn to the past, to tradition and to battle. On the eve of conquest, I say this now: I worship TENGRI!”

There were cheers, but they were few. Many looked disgruntled, or confused. The Huangdi’s conversion, on top of negotiations with the Qin dynasty, seemed yet a further unnecessary betrayal of Dashi’s legacy. Though Agdji had anticipated this, it still disappointed him; it would take a show of strength to cause the riders to abandon Buddhism. And it might well be needed soon--Yaerud An, although not a direct descendent of Taizu, the founder of the Liao, was still a member of the family and a skilled administrator. Murmurings throughout the camp began to quietly suggest that he, a loyal Buddhist, would be a better choice for Emperor than Agdji; that the entire line of Taizu had failed, and must be destroyed for the Khitan to be cleansed.

In the immediate future, however, the most critical step required reassuring the Purgyal of the continued friendship of the Yaerud, and their continued respect for Buddhism. As Kyi had mandated, the same day as Agdji’s conversion a letter from Kyi was sent to her brother, Purgyal Trimang, the husband of Agdji’s half-sister Harur, along with a large group of riders escorting the great Danda and earthly remains of the Buddha which had previously been the possession of the Yaerud. Kyi’s letter explained to her brother the decision of the Huangdi--and clearly explained that he undertook to convert despite general disapproval. A further letter, penned by Kyi but dictated by Agdji, confirmed his conversion and bestowed upon Trimang the title which Dashi had been granted by Grandmaster Taila decades before: Defender and Liege of the People of the Buddha. It was an empty title, one which none had ever really accepted, but nevertheless a prestigious one, and a clear indication that Agdji was willing to part with his past peacefully.

The conversion of the Khitan away from Buddhism was met with confusion and dismay within Tibet, but the now highly intermarried status of the two dynasties, as well as the peaceful granting of the Buddhist artifacts which Agdji had in his possession, do their job: the Purgyal, the only real house of any worth in Tibet, remain firmly loyal to their Yaerud allies.

In need of further support among the Khitans and money in order to expand the host, Agdji calls for a series of raids against the Qipchaqs under Togli Muhammadoglu (Muhammad III having been assassinated by one of his brothers some decade past). On this campaign he brings Sevindik along with him, calculating that her religion and familiarity with the people of the region might be of greater use than Asli.

Ultimately Sevindik is not particularly useful for anything but hiding herself away in the Huangdi’s yurt every day and warming his sheets at night, so determined is she to isolate herself from the world around her. But in this last manner at least she is unable to escape from her duty, and by midsummer it is clear that she is pregnant with the first of what Agdji hopes will be his many trueborn children.

Yet Agdji is, again, careful not to repeat the mistakes of his father. He sends a missive to Kyi informing her of the pregnancy immediately, and promises to spend more time with her upon his return to the main camp. For so long as it is possible, violence between his wife and his concubines must be limited.

In Tengri belief ancestors are sacred, the interlocutors of the divine. Although nothing like the role played by the Chinese Emperor, the concept is largely self-explanatory: to commune with the Gods is impossible without an intermediary. One’s ancestor-spirits are the most critical of these interlocutors, most critically because they are closer to the Gods, but also significantly due to their continued interest in the well-being of their descendants. Such is why one of Tengrism’s highest commandments is to honor one’s family, for they are the forces which will determine the likelihood of one’s living wishes reaching the ear of Tengri.

In the case of Agdji, however, there are… complications. Many of his ancestors did worship Tengri, yet they are now so far removed that he knows nothing of them, nor they him. The only ancestors of Agdji who might have his interests close at heart are his father and his mother. Yet despite his commandment of change, Dashi might well be horrified by Agdji abandoning his faith in the Buddha’s teachings. And even if he were willing to intercede on Agdji’s behalf, would he be able to as a heathen?

Meanwhile Dilek was a “mere” concubine, and even though by all rights she respected Dashi, did she love the children she bore of him? Agdji did not know, and could not. His mother had died before he had ever had a chance to know her.

Eventually, tired of uncertainty, Agdji made up his mind forcefully. Ordering that his tribe should be gathered together, a young woman gained in the recent raids south is hauled to one of the few sacrificial alters at Emil, and, before a great knife is shoved into her thrashing breast, he cried out:

“DILEK! Mother! I honor your faith and your memory with this sacrifice! In life I did not know you, but in death I beseech you: give me the power needed to crush the enemies of the Khitan, and to fulfill the prophesy of my father: that I should shake the mountains with the thunder of my deeds!”

The sacrifice, although both the Emperor and his Berkutchi advisers believed it necessary to show Agdji’s complete dedication to Tengri, was borne least-well of all his “insane” changes by the Khitan people. The night it took place there was an actual rebellion among the Khitan host, as some 250 riders attempted to ride on Agdji’s yurt and trample him to death. Although the rebellion was put down, it provided a serious shock to Agdji, and ammunition to Kyi, who had long been arguing that the barbarism which he was submitting himself to was unbecoming and unsustainable.

“And look now,” she chastised him. “I do not say that what they did was right or honorable, but can you blame their response? You came from a civilized land, even if you were not born there yourself, and rule a civilized people. Even the Tengri among your riders have been forbidden blood-sacrifice for… how many generations, now? Some six or more? And now the Huangdi commits it in front of his entire assembled host with no explanation, and full barbarity?”

“It was necessary,” Agdji maintained. “But… ill-explained. I will not argue with you in that. We must return to barbarism. I am sure you disagree, but barbarity made us strong. Strength must be all we aspire to, for the moment. There will be room for civility after we have achieved what barbarism will grant us.”

“There are other ways to attain strength,” Kyi replied, legitimate concern in her tone. A withering glance from Agdji earned him rolled eyes in response. “BEYOND spiritual strength, I mean.”

“Perhaps,” Agdji replied. It was quiet, but not dismissive. Perhaps, Kyi thought, she had gotten through to him.

She had, as it happened; Agdji was not above listening to the advice of the women around him. It was his manner to weigh all options, then move decisively in favor of the best choice he could see; Dashi often made a decision, whether it was correct or not, and simply forced the universe to bend to his will.

The meaning he had taken from Kyi’s imploring was not what she had hoped, however; rather than abandoning Tengrism, Agdji instead sought to contextualize Tengrism as a religion that was largely built around the lives his people already lived, with such unpleasant measures as sacrifice being rare but necessary payments to commune with the spirit-world.

In this spirit, the Nerge, or great hunt, was called by Agdji for that winter, in the southernmost parts of their domain. While war could not be prosecuted and Sevindik’s pregnancy approaches term, the riders of the host would spend their time in games of skill, all while serving the needs of the host to gather meat and train riders. It would be for the honor of Tengri, yes, but even a Buddhist could understand the need of such a great expedition!

It did not work, exactly. No Buddhist rider was encouraged to come over to Tengrism just because there were rituals for hunting, riding and the sparing of the weak; such were done aplenty already by the Khitans in their daily lives, as Agdji himself noted.

Though he had tried to delay it until he was ready--better-trained, stronger, more confident--there was no time remaining. The time of great conquest was upon the Khitans now, and could be put off no longer. Agdji knew he must either become such a great conqueror that no dissent could reach his ears, so great that the Khitan people would be his to shape, or fail and perish at the hands of his own host as a traitor to the memory of a Huangdi they truly venerated: Father Khitan.

Agdji ordered his riders to prepare themselves for war and gather at Ituk’s seat at Kucha. Within a month, the Huangdi assured his men, they would march forth to the first of a long series of conflicts.

Agdji waited only for the birth of his first recognized child, which he would have been called base to miss, even had he not so desperately wanted to be there himself. A fortnight after his initial proclamation, the first son of Agdji is born: Odu-on. Sadly the babe is small and sickly at birth, though Agdji’s loyal cousin, An, was able to successfully treat him with herbal medicines and warm baths to increase his vigor. Still, the child’s position is perilous; Odu-on could pass at any time, and Agdji must march onwards to war rather than stay with him. Perhaps worst of all, Kyi must be a factor in this, as Tabuyen was for his own father: usurped in her goal of providing the Huangdi his first son, the ambitious, intrigue-prone Purgyal was not above sabotaging An’s efforts to strengthen the Emperor’s firstborn son.

As Agdji prepared to ride forth the next day, he summoned Kyi to his yurt. He did not chastise her for her failure to produce a child, nor threaten her. Instead, he merely said to her, “Among the Khitan, the firstborn is not always the ruler. As in your own realms, it is he who is regarded strongest and most fit for rule. That Sevindik has given me Odu-on is not the end of the matter. The one who is strongest will rule; you need merely provide him to me.”

Even though the implication was left unsaid, the message was clear, and Kyi bowed her exit. Perhaps she would allow her anger to cool and leave Odu-on alone; perhaps not. If she did kill his son, however, he would burn her alive.

It is a cold February morning when Agdji finally arrives at Kucha in full battle regalia, trailed by his bodyguards. The cry that the Emperor had arrived raced across the encampment, and riders scrambled to their duties, mindful of the eye of the Huangdi.

At the Emperor’s summons Ituk joined him in his hastily-raised yurt, and the two turned to discussing the strategy of the campaign.

“Togli son-of-Muhammad is a weak ruler in his final years as a juvenile, dominated by his powerful uncles,” Ituk began. “But the Qarluq realm is powerful despite this. Those same uncles which murdered Muhammad III and now dominate his son are great warriors, and, I am told, have contacts within the religious orders of their faith. We can expect to face at least more enemies than we have riders, perhaps by a great number. We must rely on the mountainous terrain of the region and force them to attack us in unsuitable territory.

“Thankfully, our ongoing raids have significantly weakened their border territories--they will not hold against an assault. We might ride on Aqsu to the southwest and capture it immediately, thereby opening the path to Ordukand and the enemy’s seat at Yarkand to its south. That will hem them in and control all the mountain passes to the capital, save to the south, from which they will have no support, and to the east, from which they will have little. If we can take Ordukand, the capture of Yarkand and capitulation of Togli is all but guaranteed.”

As Ituk leaned back, Agdji scratched the stubble of his chin slowly. “It is a good plan,” he acknowledged. “But if they should hold Ordukand against us, we will be in a dire position. All the advantage we have will go over to them.”

“We must simply move quickly,” Ituk shook his head. “There is no better plan of attack than this.”

Despite the Khitan host's rapid advance the Qarluqs were faster, much faster than Ituk thought possible. Calling upon nearby Sunni religious sects to take up arms, a host of some 6,300 souls was able to seal off the Ordukand pass, and threatened to march forth and retake Aqsu, which would move the fighting into Khitan lands.

A deeply distraught Ituk, fearful for the lives of his family, spent a panicked night alongside the Huangdi coming up with alternatives. Eventually, after poring over maps for hours, he was finally forced to accept the unpleasant conclusion.

“The only alternative we possess,” he sighed wearily, “is to retreat. Take the Tian Shan pass through Yulduz, reaching Ordukand by way of Naryn. They will expect this; they may even be able to put together a greater host by that time. But by retreating we will reduce the amount of territory we must defend, and we can choose our battlefields more optimally.”

“You were at the battle of Emil, when my father defeated the Qarluq host that attacked there?” Agdji asked suddenly.

“Yes,” Ituk answered hesitantly. “I believed we were doomed. But this host is much greater in size than that one was. Were we to hold here, they would--”

“I do not suggest holding here, Ituk,” Agdji said. “My father taught our people a lesson that day: cowards do not know how to respond to bravery. You miss a third alternative: we take Ordukand by marching straight into it.”

“Agdji…” Ituk began, but as the Huangdi’s eyes turned to him, Ituk was struck dumb. For the first time, in Agdji’s eyes he witnessed the exact same certainty which he had seen in Dashi’s all those years ago. The exact same. “I will order the men to prepare,” Ituk nodded.

So it came to pass that the great Qarluq host found themselves facing off against the comparatively small host of Khitans, in advantageous position and with more than enough reserves to almost outnumber them two-to-one.

And so Agdji won the first of his legendary victories, shattering the army of Atrak Sugrid, Lord of Ordukand, and seizing the passes.

Later historians were able to attribute a large number of variables to Agdji’s success: overwhelming leadership superiority among the Khitans; Qarluq unfamiliarity with fighting a large column of mounted troops; weak bowmanship which allowed the Khitan armored cavalry to close and kill the limited Qarluq heavy infantry and pike; and cooperation between the Khitan light cavalry and horse archers, which allowed the numerically inferior Khitan light cavalry to screen the Khitan horse archers as they slaughtered the pursuing enemy cavalry. But such a stunning in-depth analysis was only possible because the battle--and its aftermath--were written about from Baghdad to Beijing. Even with all the factors in Agdji’s favor, the success was still an undeniably stunning one, a battle that claimed fewer than fifty Khitan lives while trouncing an enemy that, by all rights, should have utterly destroyed them.

That the Khitan host went on to defeat the Khan’s personal guard, capture Yarkand, and then turn to defeat the Qarluqs AGAIN in another stunningly-lopsided battle in the passes of Ordukand (this time at Yengisar) was simply proof of what the Khitan riders had already learned: Agdji was unparalleled.

Even as a humiliated Togli was forced to acknowledge the loss of the Ordukand region (renamed Kashgar at Ituk’s request by the Huangdi), Agdji proclaimed his victories not as his own, but as “the gift of my mother, Dilek! She has interceded upon my behalf with Tengri, and won us this great victory! Can you now say that the God of the Sky is powerless?”

None who were at Ordukand could. Thousands of riders abandoned Buddhism then and there for worship of Great Tengri, and as they returned to their families in the host, thousands more would follow suit. Although always present in some form within Khitan culture, religiously Buddhism’s death among the Khitans can be traced to this single war, and their consequent belief in Tengri’s immense power.

Kashgaria was a larger prize than any the Khitans had taken since their exile, and doubled their territory overnight. Yet the lands were filled with rebellious Qarluq Muslims who had no intention of obeying the wishes of their new Khitan overlords if they could avoid it, and the myriad towns, fortifications, and mosques within the region presented many alternative loci of power--or, put more simply, places for rebels to hide and prepare to launch insurrections.

Many of Agdji’s riders anticipated that a loyal rider would be raised to noble status and made a governor of the region, parallel to the manner in which the Khitans had ruled China. But Agdji surprised them once more. Although his father's words on honor rang through Agdji's mind, his father's command to change the Khitan people rang louder still. This was to be a matter of survival. And while Dashi instructed him that sometimes loss of honor was too steep a price for survival, Agdji could see no other way to achieve his father's wishes. And so he resolved to take all the dishonor of his deeds upon himself, to make his hands alone dirtied with the sins of necessity.

“My orders,” Agdji told his assembled host, “are to raze the entire territory. Leave farms and farming families untouched, but anything else should be captured, killed, or looted--destroyed, if none of these are possible. Men are to be slaughtered if they will not submit to service; women are to be taken and given to the men of the host; children will be raised by women at the camp as Khitans. Every city, mosque, fort, or any structure remaining in the territory not the house of a farmer should be burned or, if impossible to set alight, sapped. Use the knowledge of the locals to construct the siege machines for breaking walls.”

The order was met with one part shock, two awe; the Khitans had expected to settle in these lands and grow fat on them. They had not expected their Huangdi to order them to destroy everything there.

“This land is poor!” he cried to them. “It is not fit to hold us. We will seize every bit of wealth in it and continue marching on. The gold we gain here will feed us for decades to come, feed us until we find the rich lands in which we will settle!”

At this the host cried out “Hail Huangdi Agdji the Destroyer!” and rattled their spears, but the decision left Ituk shaken, and Agdji’s eyes look sunken.

Ituk met with Agdji at his request that evening, and the old man could hardly hide his concern. He did not mind what Agdji had ordered as the fate of the Qaluqs; he welcomed it, even. But it was so unlike Agdji to make the kind of ruthless order that he just had, against the clear wishes of his father. And, more concerningly, it meant that Agdji did not intend to remain in these lands. Ituk accused him of as much.

“No,” Agdji agreed. “this land is not for us. We will need the people and the wealth in order to make our push west.”

“What lies west that could draw your eye?” Ituk asked him. “I know nothing of the far west, save endless steppe. What would make you want to travel there, when your birthright lies to the east?”

“Were not you the one who insisted I learn war so that we might move on?” Agdji asked drily.

“I did,” Ituk admitted, biting his lip. “But I did not expect moving on to be heading west, Huangdi. I expected us to take residence among the remnants of my people in Kashgar, or perhaps among the Tibetans, or even in the heartland of the great Muslim lords--close at hand, in lands I know to be wealthy and defensible. I did not expect west, and why should I have? There is no reason for it; all that is contained there is endless nothingness.”

“No,” Agdji sat up straighter, his eyes regaining a little of their focus. “No, there is reason. We must become different. I do not know what the west looks like, but I know what it contains: something different than this eternal prison of endless grass and dreams delayed. For so long as the Qin reign, the Middle Kingdom is closed to us--and I will not hear word of betraying my oath!” he cut Ituk’s protest off.

“In the time between their rise and fall, we must still live. We cannot do it out here as aimless wanderers, or even nearby, constantly shackled to the memory of what we once were. We must leave this place. What will happen when we arrive I cannot say, but we will change, and in that change can be sewn the seeds of our eventual return.”

Chapter 4: The Bringer of Change, Pt. III - The Destroyer

Chapter Text

Although Ituk did not approve of the Huangdi’s decision, at Ordukand he had seen in Agdji the same power that Dashi had once wielded, to bend fate around his demands. He did not voice his complaints, therefore, and acknowledged that it was to be the eventual fate of the Khitan to move west.

In the immediate aftermath of the victory, Agdji was largely preoccupied with managing the campaign of his riders to destroy any remnants of sedentary life in the territory they had conquered. He took a new concubine there named Vimala--partly to reassure Kyi that he still had great respect for Buddhism, although he was sure the proclamation of a new woman to share his bed that was not her would simply anger her on the main--but most of his days were spent organizing long convoys of women, boys and riches to be taken to Emil, to swell the ranks of the now-burgeoning Khitan people.

In early autumn, with the destruction still in relatively early stages, a messenger from Kaifeng reached him with an expertly-painted calligraphic message congratulating the “Emperor of the West” on his victory, acknowledging his skill and requesting additional support of the Huangdi. Agdji did not doubt that this was simply a maneuver by Shizu to ensure that the Khitans were intent on keeping up their end of the bargain following their tremendous victory, but Agdji did have funds to spare with all the wealth being extracted from Kashgar, and he duly sent one-fifth of what he had thus far gained to Shizu as proof that the Khitan were upholding their end of the agreement.

Continuing in the spirit of freely spending the riches which the conquest of Kashgar had provided him, Agdji further orders the creation of a massive monument to stand the test of time at the edge of the Emil river basin: a great rendition of Dashi mounted astride Dragon, his warhorse, bearing plaques explaining the deeds of the Khitan people, their anabasis from the Middle Kingdom, and Dashi’s singular courage and skill in keeping them unified.

Although the Khitan people left the Middle Kingdom with many skilled architects, their years in exile have dimmed their skills and aged their bodies; they no longer have the capacity to construct a monument on the scale which Agdji demands. Thankfully, the Qarluq people that the Khitans just conquered do. With the capture of hundreds of skilled masons, architects, sculptors and metalworkers, all the old masters of the host need do is oversee the slave workforce that will be used to construct the great structure to Dashi’s memory, though the nature of the workforce means that slacking and sabotage are expected, and the construction might take many long years to complete.

Ituk and especially Kyi are pleased at Agdji’s decision to honor his father in such a way, but it goes beyond simply respecting Dashi for the young Huangdi. This structure is to be a beacon--even as the Khitan head west, this monument must be built to last and, Tengri willing, be found again, to eventually draw them back east. Even if the Khitans should forget their birthright in the decades and indeed centuries that might follow, the memory of Dashi and the exile from the Middle Kingdom must be kept alive, as must the sacred nature of the Emil river basin, it which gave succor to the weary Khitan people in their time of most dire need.

The same day that the order for the construction of the great monument to Dashi is issued, Agdji marches into Hunza to depose its ruler, Irkin. In a convoluted series of relationships, Irkin was de jure a vassal of Togli Khan, but de facto a tributary of Raja Atar Lohara, who was himself a tributary of the Purgyal Kings of Tibet. But Irkin did not participate in the defense against the Khitan invasion of Kashgar, and the Purgyal did not see any gold themselves from Lohara’s tributary relationship with Irkin; they acknowledged Agdji’s right to depose the local ruler and further expand the Khitan host.

Hunza is easily captured, and the rampaging Khitan host enters its confines and begins to raze it along with the other Kashgar acquisitions that winter. Its wealth and population will be added to the Khitan’s own, to the benefit of the great host.

The gravest news arrives at the host’s encampment even as the victory celebrations are ongoing, however: Yaerud Odu-on, firstborn of Agdji, has passed. A handwritten note from Agdji’s cousin Yaerud An, the physician in charge of the little one’s health, testifies that Agdji’s son took a turn for the worse in the summer, and despite everything he did he could not save his life. But An swears that Kyi behaved with absolute respect to the young one, and that he believes that she had nothing to do with little Odu-on’s death; the boy was simply weak of constitution, and even An’s best efforts could not save him.

Agdji is far from Odu-on’s mother Sevindik, and even were he not he suspects that she would not wish to see him, or to seek comfort of him; judging Agdji as a rapist and heathen, she is likely pleased that the child she bore for him is dead. And, in an encampment surrounded by warriors, weeping was imprudent. In a move unknowingly mirroring Dashi’s actions years before, his son spent the cold night alone under the starts, begging Tengri to take no more children from him.

But conquest waits for no man, not even a grieving one. The Kucet Khanate to the north, ruled by Agdji’s concubine Asli’s brother, Itlar Kucet, has made several threatening moves on the borders of Emil. Concerned about the security of the great monument being constructed there, Agdji’s force marches north in order to put down Itlar’s hold on the bordering territories, and to finally begin to push the Khitans north-and-west.

The war itself is almost comically simple, ending as soon as Itlar’s camp in Zaysan is sacked, leading to a great Qipchaq exodus to the west. The new lands are quickly integrated into the burgeoning Khitan horde, and the encampment at Emil, long vulnerable to a raid which has thankfully never came, can now breathe easily, secured on all sides by the efforts of the Huangdi.

Unfortunately, not all is well within the Liao Empire. Mass rebellions have broken out in Kashgar following the Emperor’s move north, and the Huangdi is forced to rush south to address them, preventing further expansion.

Agdji’s anger at the rebellion of the Kashgar is surprisingly muted. He anticipated rebels, and he treats them ruthlessly--trampled by charging horses, to a man--but he inflicts no further punishment upon their families or their children, giving them over to Khitan men as he does any of the Qipchaqs still alive in the region. In some ways Agdji is even impressed by the rebels that did rise up, for “any who did not fight to save themselves from total destruction would not be fit to join our ranks.”

Even so, the rebellion makes several things clear to Agdji: the region is tumultuous, he cannot be everywhere at once, and the destruction of the Qarluq people in the region is almost complete. The time has come to finally raise a local governor who can manage the remnants of the Qarluqs there.

As the last two stones standing in Tashkurgan are tumbled and the bodies of the dead are given to the earth as fertilizer, the first governor of the Khitans is appointed. Shulu Aerlu'on, the son of the loyal rider Shulu Cha, who was a young child during the exodus from the Middle Kingdom and rose to the position of camp commandant under Dashi, is selected as the first new Khitan noble of the Western Liao. To his governance is promised the entire Kashgar region, save for Ituk’s seat at Kucha, and Ordukand province (now renamed Kashgar as well), which Agdji claims as his by right of his incredible deeds there.

As Aerlu’on kneels before Agdji and acknowledges him as Huangdi and Lord Liao, a new era is thrust upon the Khitans. No longer is Agdji the sole source of authority within the Liao; he must now answer to vassal governors. Sworn men they may be, but they will now have their own horses, their own men, and their own armies, all by Agdji’s hand, greatly reducing the population of Khitan men and women available to him in the process. No longer is the Lord Liao the unquestioned ruler of all Khitans--an era of change is already upon the host.

And the tumult does not stop in Kashgar. The world itself is in tumult, nowhere greater than in the near east. The Christian Kingdoms of Jerusalem and Egypt have been utterly destroyed, the former by a peasant ruler Muzahim, who led a successful conquest of Damascus and eventually formed a powerful Sultanate there, and the latter by the efforts of the petty tribal rulers of Cyrenaica, the Zaydi Muslim Shaybahid emirs. Despite the great successes of the First and Second Crusades and the cooperation between the two realms, even the power of Jerusalem and Egypt together were not sufficient to sustain Christianity in the region, and Islam has poured back in like a sea undammed.

Worse still, it threatens to pour forth even more violently, as the Second Righteous Jihad is called, this time for the Byzantine Emperor’s heartlands in Nikaia. Caliph Ziyad is despised as a wicked and sinful man, but rumor has it that the Byzantine Emperor is himself a heretic, and embroiled with internecine strife within his own realm. It is possible--though God send it does not occur!--that Ziyad could prove victorious in this, the Empire’s moment of weakness.

Even with Aerlu’on established as the governor of Kashgar, for the moment he has few families grazing the land, and fewer still riders who could put down serious revolts. The Huangdi’s host is forced to encamp in Kashgar in order to put down any further threats that might arise, and as such, though the Emperor does not move the greater Khitan camp from Emil, he does call Kyi and his remaining concubines to stay at the forward camp.

It is during this time that Kyi becomes pregnant for the first time, and in the winter gives birth to their first child, whom Agdji names Ordelhan, after his oldest sister and caretaker.

Despite Agdji’s personal hatred of Tabuyen, this does not extend to all the Siau; he remembers his father’s words about debt well, and there is a debt to the rest of the Siau. Thus, from birth little Ordelhan was promised to her cousin Siau Uldjin, the son of Ordelhan the Elder, Agdji’s sister. It is hoped that the Siau and Yaerud clans will continue to coexist, until such a time as the Khitan people finally find their eternal home and the two clans can take up their proper relationship: the Siau as loyal governors and advisers, and the Yaerud as benevolent masters.

Notably, however, Kyi disapproves of the betrothal.

“He is twenty years her senior,” she complains to Agdji, “and, though I thank you for giving her to a good Buddhist man, he is, forgive me, fat, weak and womanly all at once. Our daughter can do better.”

“Perhaps,” Agdji mused. “But it is not about doing well or poorly. It is about debt, a concept which you should know well, Lady Purgyal. Did I not buy your acceptance of my conversion with scraps of the Buddha’s flesh?”

Kyi flushed, and Agdji nodded his head slightly. “So it was. If you have wisdom for me, speak it. If not, the Siau are owed a true debt, one which we must pay for many generations. I was raised beside Uldjin, and he is the blood of my blood; he is as a brother to me. He deserves our daughter and more, should he desire it.”

After the pacification of North Turkestan and the securing of the borders of Emil, Agdji issues further orders that another governor should be appointed in the region, to oversee the east when, inevitably, the main host under the Huangdi turns to the west. Another Aerlu’on is thereby appointed: Miguniai Aerlu’on. The son of a Uighur man who joined the Khitan host following the first raids into the Kucha territory, Aerlu’on acculturated under the Khitans and adopted their customs.

This Aerlu’on’s succession to a governate is not on the basis of any proven skill, however, but loyalty. Miguniai Aerlu’on was one of the first in the host to convert to his liege’s Tengri faith, and, when Agdji issued the order that the Khitan host would march on Ordukand, Aerlu’on killed three men who were plotting to attempt to raise the rest of the host against Agdji’s “madness.” In the spirit of Dashi, such selfless loyalty is rewarded: the Miguniai will, for so long as the Yaerud clan rules and their faith proves true, be honored with great lands and riches.

Though rewarding the Miguniai is a prudent move which has gained the guaranteed support of another large part of the Khitan people for many years, the decision to grant them a great deal of land is not without its downsides. The Huangdi has now been forced to part with almost fully half of his horses, women, children and goods as grants in order to support the creation of these new vassal governates. Supporting 3500 riders with merely 14,000 souls spread over such a disjointed breadth of territory as the Huangdi now rules is not easy, and perhaps not even possible; the Emperor’s treasury is rapidly shrinking merely attempting to pay his men, and with rebellions still smoldering across Kashgar no raids can even be undertaken to compensate for the loss of funds. Although the wealth available to the Emperor is still tremendous, it is quickly drying up.

There is good news--of a sort, at any rate--despite the growing Khitan financial concerns, however: Vimala, the Huangdi’s concubine, has become pregnant.

There are certain extraordinary circ*mstances in her case, however. Upon hearing that the Huangdi had ordered the piecemeal destruction of her home city and the enslavement of her family, she, much like Sevindik, became rather… unhinged. Both of them are so enraged at the Huangdi that they have done their utmost to refuse serving him, and he has been forced to be violent with them. Sevindik even started an obvious and almost childishly simple plan to have him assassinated, which was easily detected and foiled. But now the already despondent woman bears the bruises of the Khitan fists which punished her for her insolence in daring to threaten the Celestial Khan.

Her pregnancy, then, is neither a happy nor willing one; unlike Asli and Kyi, Sevindik and Vimala are not likely to ever be complacent women again. Vimala will be forced to spend her pregnancy under armed guard, constantly tended to by Khitan midwives, to ensure that she does nothing to harm the child of the Huangdi, which she no doubt resents carrying.

A stunning and unanticipated reversal has taken place. Armies loyal to Caliph Ziyad Abbasid defeated the Roman Emperor outside Dorylaion, capturing the old man and forcing him to acknowledge the victory of the Jihadists! The entire Nikaean coast has fallen into the hands of the Caliph, who has proclaimed himself Padishah of Nikaea and has set about establishing loyal new governors in the region. Despite Ziyad’s personally deplorable behavior and his lack of any meaningful skill, his lucky victory against Ioannes IV has cast the Roman Empire into tumult, and immediately raised up a strong Sunni realm in Anatolia that has cut off much of the Empire’s periphery, and is strong enough to threaten it on equal terms.

Worse still, Ioannes IV’s defeat has caused the Empire to devolve into almost absolute anarchy. As a Tondrakian heretic, in many ways Ioannes is hostile to his own state and its bureaucracy, which, following his stunning and total defeat despite overwhelming superiority, will do him few favors. The Ecumenical Patriarch calls for him to be deposed quite openly, but even he is little-heeded, with people wailing in the streets that God has abandoned them. The “Second Imperial Collapse” has flown in the face of the Komnenid restoration. The ostensible heir to the Empire is not even a man, but the Emperor's great-niece Lady Basileia Komnenos, an Orthodox faithful descended of Basileus Alexias.

That the nobility of the Empire would look so far afield--and to a woman, no less--for their next ruler is telling. The Empire itself is spiraling into a second collapse, from which it may never recover.

Mounting concerns about finances, as well as the Khitan host’s inability to leave Kashgar while its rebelliousness continues, finally forces the Huangdi’s hand: an order is issued to move the majority of the camps from Emil, which had long been the Khitan seat under Dashi, to Kashgar itself, where Agdji intends for it to remain for a long while.

Kashgar is both well-defended and situated directly on the Road of Silk, providing a more direct route of communication and trade to the Middle Kingdom. Although Agdji does not relish further demands from the Qin facilitated by easier communication, he is well-aware that he can utilize the merchants plying the roads through his land to secure additional funds. The creation of new, Khitan-run trading posts should allow the Huangdi to recoup much of his losses, and further wars against the Qaluqs and Qipchaqs should quickly restore the host’s coffers.

Still, moving the camps from Emil is not a simple decision. The region is sacred to the Khitan people, as the great monument that Agdji ordered constructed there shows. Thus, despite the financial burdens already facing the Khitans, two new great constructions are ordered: two great temples to Tengri, one in Kashgar and one in Emil. They will honor the two Emperors of the Khitans: Dashi of Emil, and Agdji, victor of Kashgar.

That winter, blessedly, Lady Purgyal announces to the Huangdi that she, too, is pregnant.

The Emperor had been deeply concerned that the continued lack of a son from Kyi would lead her to move against his concubines. Although she had behaved herself for the time being, that was most likely because his first son, Odu-on, had died a sickly infant; should another boy be born and Kyi not have a contender of her own blood to succeed, the same strife which existed under Tabuyen could return to the fore. If Kyi’s child is a boy, however, it is likely that all would be calm. The tension over the threat of another period of strife had set Agdji to pacing.

“If you pace a hole in the floor of this tent, husband, I will be annoyed,” Kyi chuckled. He shot her a withering glance, but she only adopted a smug smile in response. “It will be a boy or it will not be. There are many more chances for a son. You are not an old man, and I am no old woman. The strongest rule, no?”

She laughed again, and patted her rounding belly. “I have faith mine will be strongest. Share that faith, and be calm.”

Despite Kyi’s earlier words of confidence, none could miss her annoyance when Sevindik gave birth to a healthy baby boy, which Agdji (confusingly) named Aerlu’on. The proliferation of important individuals named Aerlu’on during this period would later be judged by historians as a major component of why the Khitan themselves were so confused about historical events during the early years Agdji's reign, and their uncertainty about how far their own records could be believed, for they would often mistake Yaerud Aerlu’on with Shulu Aerlu’on and Miguniai Aerlu’on, Agdji’s governors!

Although Agdji was careful not to give little Aerlu’on too much of his time in order to avoid further souring Kyi’s mood, her annoyance was still plain for everyone to see. She ignored the midwives’ advice and was almost constantly active, as if such would further encourage her to give birth to a son, and Agdji even caught her whispering to her belly in Tibetan sometimes. He could not understand the language well himself, but he knew it was something close to “please be a son.”

In order to get away from his wife’s obsessive behavior, the Huangdi calls for another great tournament, this time to honor the birth of Aerlu’on, and the imminent birth of his child by Kyi. Hopefully it would give him the excuse to be out of his yurt most days until she had given birth.

Agdji did not win the martial tournament; that honor fell to Ituk, who this time did decide to participate, and in a show of his immense skill upset his much younger pupil early in the contest. Yet Agdji, as ever with his friend and mentor, was not upset by being embarrassed before his host, and congratulated him on his victory even as Ituk congratulated him on the birth of his son, and wished him another.

Indeed, it was not even at the tournament that Agdji earned his next recognition, but in a pitched battle with raiders at the Kashgar camps. The competitions were being held to the south at Yarkand (far enough away that Agdji had an excuse to be away from Kyi until she gave birth), but word reached the competitors there that a Qarluq host was approaching Kashgar with intent to raid it while the Huangdi was away, and carry away his family.

Immediately the assembled host threw down their blunted weapons and quit their games of skill and took to their horses, riding hard north for the camps of the Huangdi. There they intercepted the Qarluq host even as it was engaging the few guards that had been left at the camp, and an enraged Agdji, fearing for the lives of his children, charged them with wild abandon. His blood frenzy, along with the immense skill with which he defended the camp perimeter as his host caught up and eventually encircled the enemy, earned him the acclaim of the host and their acknowledgement of him as a truly exceptional warrior.

Sadly the defense of the camps led to the premature ending of the competitions, and Agdji was forced to spend the remainder of his wife’s pregnancy by her side in the camps, as she took to ever-increasing obsessions in the hopes of giving him a son. He was now the one who often had to wearily tell her to avoid pacing a hole in the floor of the yurt, and her constant attempts to speak to their unborn child left him infuriatingly uncertain when she was trying to speak to him or to the babe.

Eventually, though, she did give birth--to a daughter, Yaerud Arel. But, surprisingly, Kyi showed not the least bit of annoyance at it.

“I made the attempt to see if it would make a difference,” she explained to him the day after she gave birth. “It did not, and I know that for the future. I will do as the midwives say next time, and I will get you a son worthy of our joined houses.”

“Do not be so preoccupied with the idea of a son yourself,” Agdji chastised her lightly. “Should Aerlu’on prove the stronger, he will rule. You must be prepared for this, and take no dishonorable actions.”

“Do not presume me a traitor and murderer,” Kyi huffed. “I am not your father’s wife. My blood will win because it is the strongest.”

Her reassurances helped not a whit. Agdji would watch her, at least until he had a son of her--then he would watch Aerlu’on.

As the years continued to pass Khitan finances seemed only to grow worse, never better. Most of their wealth was still being drawn from ravaging Kashgar, and there were few settlements left there to pillage, or slaves to take. While the establishment of a trading center in Kashgar province was helping to offset the depletion, it could not even fully compensate for the cost of maintaining the host which the Khitans had raised, which was necessary for their defense despite the huge drain on resources it represented. This was all the more dangerous following the division of the Khitan people into governates, as Agdji now had precious few souls remaining to him to tax, or to press into riding with the host. More land was needed, and needed immediately.

It came to pass that winter that Ituk advised the Huangdi to launch an assault on the isolated Qarluq territory of Udun, which was both indefensible from the Qarluq capital at Tashkand, as well as housing an alternate route to the Middle Kingdom which could be used by Shulu Aerlu’on to fund the growth of his own host--and, more importantly, to be taxed by Agdji. On the 27th of November, then, Agdji gave the order to his assembled host to march into Udun and capture it in the name of the Shulu clan, and the complete eradication of the Qarluq from the steppes.

None could know the tragedy that would follow.

The Qarluqs, for all that the Khitans looked down at them, were not a foolish, weak, or cautious people. They had anticipated an attack at Udun for some time, and the Emir that ruled there, Etrek Kyrre, had been ordered by the Khan to build defensive works in preparation for slowing the host of Agdji down. Initially, both Ituk and Agdji had believed that the unusually mighty fortifications they faced at Khotan were anomalies, but they soon discovered dozens more, and quickly sussed out their true purpose: to delay and distract them.

Urgent riders came from Kashgar not a month after the campaign had begun, informing the Huangdi that a Qarluq host some 3,000 men strong had taken the Ferghana pass into Kashgar province and had begun to raid the camps. Those defenders left behind by the Huangdi were doing their best to delay the inevitable collapse of the defense, but the Emperor’s forces needed to retreat there immediately if they were to have any hope of holding.

To his immense regret, Agdji doubted the messenger--no force could take the Ferghana pass so quickly! He delayed one week to finish the siege at Khotan before riding back to Kashgar, and this proved to be his doom. For, by the time he arrived, almost 3,000 Qarluqs gazed at his men from within his camps, where fires blazed and heads were seen affixed to spikes. The main encampment of the Khitan people had been burned by an enemy. The safety of the Emperor’s family was uncertain.

Agdji was gripped by an urgency the likes of which his people had never before seen. His fury at the humiliation he had been dealt--and at the danger to his family and his people--drove all reason from his mind. Even as his outriders warned him that another, even larger host was approaching Kashgar and would arrive in mere days, Agdji ignored them. In his fury, he gave the only order he could give:

“Run them down, run them down! Blood them, blood them, run them down!”

The Third Battle of Kashgar represented all of the hopes of the Qarluq Khanate. Should the Qarluqs prove victorious, they would break the backs of the Khitans, recently weakened by the division of their territories; yet, should they fail, they would lose their last access to the lucrative trade of the Middle Kingdom, and also the lion’s share of their manpower. They would find themselves utterly defenseless against all future threats.

Unfortunately for the Qarluqs, they chose to undertake this gambit against Agdji.

Alone, without aid, they stood no chance. Even in defensive terrain, even holding the camp of the Khitan Emperor hostage, even with 6,000 reinforcements from Tashkand. The Khitans knew the land around the camp so completely that every defense was countered before the Qarluqs even realized it. Even when reinforcements arrived from the opposite direction under the command of Sotan Aepakid, it was trivial for the Khitans to divide the two groups, reduce the first, and then turn and rout Sotan’s forces. He was even captured following his forces' wild flight, which saw only a fifth of the Qarluqs who had marched into Kashgar make it back out, frenzied and terrified.

It is the height of irony that Agdji became known as a kind man in this very battle, for his order not to pursue the Qarluqs. He ordered his men to put out the camp’s fires and search for his family instead, and this, in their eyes, made him a great and kind ruler.

None of what he said to his prisoner was kind.

“Tell your cousin the Khan,” Agdji whispered to his captive Sotan, “that he has spelled the death of his people. I am called Agdji the Destroyer by my own folk--I will make that name a reality to your people as well, in such a way that what I have done to Kashgar is seen as but the playful jest of a kind old man. I will destroy the Qarluq so utterly that history will not remember that you ever existed. Go to Tashkand and tell him. I will see his people dead, and it will begin with him.”

The Huangdi’s fury was not without just cause. Despite their defeat of the Qarluqs, the Khitans had been deeply shaken by the capture of Kashgar. Although the Emperor’s family was safe, Vimala was captured by the Khan’s forces, and had to be ransomed in exchange for Sotan. Worse still, the devastation of the camp and its population was extreme. Specialized equipment, bought from Khiva or even the rumored lands of the Seljuk Shah, was stolen or destroyed; fletchers and experienced riders had been cut down or captured; and hundreds of wagons and yurts had been burned. It was a setback which would take immense wealth and time to recover from--and the former, at least, the Khitan people did not have in abundance.

Perhaps worse was the loss of confidence in Agdji. Although the Third Battle of Kashgar was heralded as a legendary victory on par with the previous battles there, and though Agdji’s host had seen his immense skill in that battle and stood behind him firmly, the camp residents could not help but see it in a different light. Their Huangdi had held back from them despite their dire need, and despite sending him much-advanced warning. He had allowed their yurts to be burned and the camp residents to be slaughtered. He had won in the end, but who would even benefit from that victory? It would be the Shulu governate, not their own people, or their own herds.

Agdji was forced to immediately address these concerns, which he accomplished by ordering the wholesale desolation of the Udun territory, and the usage of its wealth and its slaves to rebuild the camps at Kashgar. It was still too little and too late as far as many were concerned, but it was proof that at least one of their conceptions was incorrect--they would profit from the victory.

This was but the first step in what would prove a gradual process of regaining trust. When his first son with Kyi was born a few short weeks after the victory and named Agdji after his father, the camp was full not of the usual celebrations, but sullen mutterings.

All that occupied Agdji’s mind over the following year was setting the world to rights--he pursued this objective to the exclusion of almost everything else, even attention to his newborn son. He spent his newfound wealth, gained from the destruction of the camps at Udun, purchasing the goods needed to repair the damage to the camps at Kashgar, but time soon became the main factor, as the hundreds of specialists killed in the Qarluq raid slowed the re-adoption of the advanced methods which the great camp had once been able to call upon. When this avenue of indemnity expired, he took instead to raiding at Ferghana in the hopes that he could capture additional slaves to further bolster his people in this time of trial.

As expected, the raid on Ferghana was accomplished with no difficulty, as Khan Togli was seriously distracted by several major wars--his defeat at Kashgar had, as Agdji had hoped, left his state utterly defenseless against its myriad foes from across the steppe, including Agdji’s own governors.

The Khan did note the raid, however. Already infuriated by the words brought back to him by his cousin Sotan, the raid on Ferghana seemed to prove to the Khan that Agdji’s words were not mere boast, and his people were in mortal danger. He swore eternal enmity on Agdji and his house, proclaiming that he would die before seeing his people trodden by the “beggar-Emperor.”

But, for the moment, the Huangdi was still far from exacting his revenge upon Togli Khaqani. Instead, his attention turned toward the northwest, and the great plains that stretched out there. They were the key both to the final destination of the Khitan people and to remedying the present situation among the main host, as the conquest of new grazing land could easily compensate Agdji’s people for their losses in the capture of Kashgar. While mounting unrest in Udun required the riders’ presence there, the Emperor believed it possible to briefly take to the steppe, win quick victories, and return to Udun before any rebellion there could seriously threaten the Khitan efforts to desolate the region.

The first target of Agdji’s expansion was Togli Kuchet, nephew of his concubine Asli. Although his lands and his herds were minuscule, at her request Agdji released all captives he took from the campaign, including Togli himself, and permitted them to enter into the service of the Khitan hosts if they so wished.

The subsequent war was not so brotherly a one. It was to be the first war against a true horse-lord which Agdji had ever undertaken, against Khan Girgan Baruq, a skilled administrator and warrior who ruled territory stretching from the southern banks of the Caspian Sea to the frigid territories on the edge of the vast Siberian tundra.

“The war must be quick,” Agdji told Miguniai Aerlu’on, governor of the north, who was to accompany him. “We must raid them rapidly, crush their armies, and seize their territories with all speed. I must be back in Udun ere nine months have passed.”

Despite the freezing ground and staunch defense of the enemy around their territories at Irgiz and Turgay, the Huangdi made quick gains against the enemy in the late months of the year, capturing two of their strongholds and one of the vassal chiefs of Baruq, worth a handsome sum.

Yet the Qipchaqs, like their cousins the Qarluqs, surprised Agdji. A large and fast-moving band of riders managed to outflank the Khitan host and ride behind them, staying ahead of their movement for hundreds of kilometers even as they gave great chase. It was only with tremendous skill that Agdji was able to catch up to them in Seljuk-occupied Sarisu and rout them before they could enter Khitan territory. The skill with which Agdji used his men, and especially the versatility with which he utilized his outriders to harry the enemy and allow his main host to catch up, finally earned Agdji the recognition of many of the Islamic scholars who had previously simply acknowledged him as a lucky barbarian. From this point onward, he was no longer merely some distant warlord to them--he was a true strategist, one uncomfortably close to the heart of their territory.

Agdji was forced to ride hard away from the Khan’s seat to intercept the enemy host at Sarisu, however, and was now required to march his men back in the opposite direction, significantly delaying the campaign. Although all effort was made to rapidly march to the banks of the Caspian Sea and capture the Khan, continual attempts to outflank the Khitan host required constant battles to move forward, and the campaign virtually stalled, to Agdji's great frustration. He was needed in Udun to complete its sacking, and he longed to plan his campaign to annihilate the Qarluqs, yet most of his days were instead spent on the back of his horse, riding in circles.

In the midst of this monotony, a runner arrived at the host to inform the Huangdi that rumors from the Road of Silk suggested that the Middle Kingdom had devolved into civil war once again, with the brief period of stability under the Qin already having collapsed into another attempt to found a new Dynasty. The impositions of the Qin had been far from welcome, but the pact of mutual recognition which Agdji had negotiated ensured that the Mongols would not raid the Khitans, nor any forces from the Middle Kingdom assault them. If the Qin were to be overthrown, those protections would fall by the wayside--and, worse still, the Qin Emperor might think to emulate the example of the Liao and march west into exile. This threat only emphasized the Emperor's need be back in Kashgar; no further delay could be tolerated.

At tremendous risk, Agdji ordered the Khitan host divided in two for the first time ever, one half under his command and the other under Miguniai Aerlu’on’s. Aerlu’on would screen Agdji and fight his battles as the Huangdi’s forces were tasked to the siege, capturing the last settlements from Girgan on the coast and thereby ensuring the success of the war. It was risky, as well as being particularly draining on the Khitans’ already-limited manpower, but the host must be freed to return east with all speed.

Despite the risks, the maneuver is a categorical success, and a month after Agdji gave the order to split the host it is again reunited and on its way back to Kashgar, now with the northwestern steppe secured to it, and host to many of the Khitans’ roaming horse and sheep herds.

Surprisingly, rather than the myriad victories against the fellow Muslim Qarluqs in Kashgar, it is the campaign against Girgan Baruq, a barbarian, which truly awakens the wider Islamic world to the threat posed by the Khitan. Judging the Qarluqs to be weak themselves, and far from the ravages that took place in Kashgar, the Persian elite--the only Islamic group thus far which had spent any real time writing on the Khitans--had been stunned by the rumors of Agdji’s victories, but largely dismissive of their context. The seizure of so much land so close to them, and in such a short time, was horrifying. Add to this the strategic flexibility which Agdji was slowly beginning to show, and the Persian elite had every reason to be seriously concerned about the security of their frontiers.

Still, for the moment, they are left inviolate. In his rush to return to Kashgar Agdji does not raid the Seljuks, and they are lulled into a wary complacency. They do send an imam to Kashgar in an effort to convert Agdji, but after being imprisoned and forced to ransom his way to safety, the Muslims do not try again for many years.

Upon Agdji’s return to Kashgar, he spends many days reveling again in his women, whom he had suffered the absence of longer than he wished. Despite the continued fury of Sevindik towards the Huangdi over his treatment of the Qarluqs Agdji is particularly amorous towards her, and she is soon left pregnant again, against her wishes.

Once more virtually imprisoned by midwives and guards, Sevindik is isolated for nearly nine months, driving her deeper into her melancholy. But Agdji does not care at all about Sevindik's well-being, merely that she lives long enough to birth his child, and the Khitan midwives ensure she does. Her child is Yaerud Yash, a healthy baby girl and Agdji’s third daughter.

Just as Kyi could previously not hide her fury toward Sevindik when she gave birth to Aerlu'on, it is difficult now for her to obscure her mocking smugness.

Since mid-1172, the remains of the Khanate of Turkestan had been embroiled in a chaotic series of wars. As Seljuk Persia pressed in from the west, the Khitan governates attacked from the east, and a claimant to the throne besieged Tashkand, what little power Togli Khan had once held in his lands was stolen from him, as he was made a prisoner of various interest factions and, eventually, a prisoner in truth to successive enemies vying for control of his territory.

The first to take control of the Khan was Asalup Khaqani, a Persophile and distant relative of Togli Khan who was also claimant to his titles. Asalup captured the Khan after spending almost two years besieging the area around Tashkand, and was subsequently able to negotiate a division of Togli Khan’s territories, which placed almost half of them completely under Asalup’s control as an independent Khan.

Unfortunately, Asalup was more than slightly insane, as well as being rather stupid and seriously ill. The dim-witted man chose as his lands Mavar-an-Nahr, the territory which bordered the Huangdi, and Agdji immediately made his move against the self-styled Sultan, ordering his host through the Ferghana pass and declaring his intention to fully seize and utterly raze all of Asalup’s lands.

Antipathy between Asalup and Togli Khan, as well as continued infighting in Tashkand, assured that Togli would provide no reinforcements to his erstwhile cousin, while Asalup’s long war with Togli prevented the new Sultan from having either the resources or the manpower to resist the rampaging Khitans. In the end, Asalup was to be a Sultan in nothing but name, never truly ruling the territory which he had spent years fighting to control. From the moment the Khitans rode down through the Ferghana pass, his ambitions were ended.

News soon reached Agdji and the host that Kyi was pregnant, and the imminent birth of his newest child was often more on the Huangdi’s mind than the prosecution of the war, so easy was it to deal with the meagre defenses available to the would-be Sultan.

“With the success of this war,” Agdji told his aged confidant Ituk, “I will have restored to my people the wealth and men they lost in the raid against Kashgar, and will have another child--Tengri grant it be a son!--as well. My dishonor will be cleansed and, finally, our power will truly be on the ascent. Soon not even the Seljuk will have the bravery to stand against us!”

Ituk sat atop his horse, back straight and eyes narrow--still proud, even if he was covered in furs to keep the chill out of his old bones. At 69, he was older than Dashi was when he passed, and indeed was one of the oldest of the Khitan host, among the few still alive who remembered the day Dashi arrived on the steppe from the east.

“Do not be too hasty to seek the Shah’s blood,” ran his wisdom. “You are mighty, Agdji. But not yet so mighty that you can stand against the Shah and survive, not with a host this size.”

Agdji nodded slowly, though he was not sure he believed Ituk; he had yet to lose a single battle. He felt invincible in war. Ituk was a legend, but could he not also be out-of-touch? He had proven so in the past.

Agdji spent much of the remainder of his time in Ferghana pondering Ituk’s words, even as he issued orders to round up Qarluqs and variously execute or enslave them. His fury to the Qarluq people was unabated, but Ituk’s words had given him unexpected pause. Now bordering the Shahdom directly, would it be dangerous for the Khitan to make further moves against Togli Khan? The Rape of Ferghana was already in such a fever pitch that it would be impossible for the Seljuks to not see it as a barbaric insult to their religion, and it might easily come to pass that they would decide to defend their fellow Muslims in the future, perhaps to the Khitans’ great peril.

Agdji was not interested in abandoning his designs on the remainder of Togli Khan’s lands, however, and so spent many weeks absorbed with thinking on how to circumvent potential Seljuk invasion in the event that they should support him. He was so distracted that he almost missed returning to Kashgar in time for the birth of his newest child!

To Kyi’s immense pleasure, it is Agdji’s third son: Yaerud Ago. As the youngest child with none of the pressure of Aerlu’on or hopes of Agdji the Younger on his shoulders, Ago’s youth was likely to be a very much different one from his two elder brothers’. Perhaps he, at least, could grow up in peace, without expectations placed upon his success.

Unfortunately for Agdji, his distraction caused him to miss the obvious signs that Ituk was unwell.

The proud Uighur had never let on that he was feeling ill. Beholden as none of his people ever before had been to the hospitality and generosity of the Khitan, Ituk did not dream of refusing Agdji's request to participate in the invasion of Ferghana, even though the Emperor would gladly have allowed him a peaceful retirement if he had but said a word. Instead Ituk suffered through a terribly rough campaign in silence as his health grew worse by the day, and was barely able to remain upright to say his goodbyes to the Huangdi at Kashgar by the time the campaign was over. It was said by his son, Sugr, that his father returned to his seat slumped over his horse, was taken to his bed, and died within hours of his arrival.

The death of his father was an immense blow to Sugr. Though he had not been raised alongside Agdji the two were intimately familiar with one another, and Sugr respected Agdji and his decision to convert from Buddhism, though of course he did not approve of it any more than Kyi had. But perceptions that Agdji had worked his father to death, as well as Agdji’s own persistent guilt that he may truly have, soured their early relationship as vassal and liege.

Agdji demanded that the entire Khitan host attend Ituk’s funeral, and so the solemn Buddhist ritual was overseen by ten whisper-quiet rows of soldiers, all bowed with heads to the ground, saying silent prayers to Tengri on behalf of Ituk. To his own people he was known as “the Wise,” but to the Khitans he would always be known by the epithet history remembers him by: “Savior of the Liao.” None of them had forgotten what Ituk Daerqa did for them--and unlike the the events of Dashi's life, which would pass into legend as the centuries came and went, none ever would. The sacrifices of the Daerqa would never be forgotten.

But events did not wait for the grief of the Khitans to move forward. Defeated in both of his remaining conflicts, Khan Togli was now at peace and had begun to stabilize his realm once more. Even with Ituk dead there seemed no real chance of being defeated by the Qarluqs, but should they be allowed to gather their strength an eventual future war could all the more easily attract the attention of the Seljuks, or the Seljuks themselves could organize and attack the Qarluq Khan before the Khitans were prepared, strengthening their own position on the steppe and making it all the more difficult to dislodge them. Agdji made the decision, then, to strike immediately.

It was known that Togli fancied himself something of a swordsman, but was also fat and bookish, wasting what little talent he had with the blade in childish pursuits. Agdji knew he could easily defeat him, and so issued a challenge the ambitious Khan could not ignore: defeat the Huangdi, and Agdji would restore all his lands and people unto him.

In some ways it was a reckless decision, even though it was clear to all that Agdji would win. But the prize had to be great for Togli to be willing to take the bait, and, even though the response was slow, it did eventually come: he accepted. The duel was to take place at the end of June, at the border between the province of Tashkand and the plains of Khojand.

The nature of the meeting was heavily coordinated. Neither side was permitted to bring more than fifty retainers, one scout from either side was permitted to examine the camps and equipment of the other, and, when the two sides met, weapons were only permitted to be carried by the duelists and their baggage-men. It was, after all, a meeting between rivals; neither side was beneath the possibility of foul play.

“In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful," Togli intoned, "and his grace in granting me leadership of my people, I will defeat you, heathen, and restore unto myself my patrimony! You horsem*n will be driven before us once more, as the nomads of Africa were driven before us in the great Jihads!”

Agdji did not know what Africa was, or a Jihad, but he was tired of the fat man speaking. He hefted his axe and stepped into the circle the two sides had designated for the fight, and, hesitantly, Togli followed him.

The “fight,” if it could even be called that, was over in a few minutes. For all of his bellowing about God-given grace, Togli was quickly winded and exhausted. The Khan did surprise Agdji once, switching his weapon between hands seamlessly and almost cutting the Huangdi with a surprise left lunge, but after that point Agdji was more careful, and Togli never again got close.

Finally, with Togli on the verge of collapsing, Agdji saw his moment. The Emperor rushed forward, sinking his axe deep into the meat of Togli’s right leg. The Khan cried out and collapsed, and cheers rose from the Khitans even as the Qarluqs cried out.

Agdji kicked Togli’s sword from his hand and crouched down next to his defeated foe. “Your son will be next,” he told him, “but I told you years ago I would start with you. I am a man of my word, and I do not invoke it unless I intend to follow through.”

Togli’s eyes grew panicked even as Agdji ripped the axe from his leg, and thrust it down into Togli’s unprotected head.

The cold-blooded murder of the Khan in a field that was meant to be dedicated to honest combat enraged the Qarluqs, but with the only two weapons on the field (Togli’s and Agdji’s) in Khitan hands, they made the wise decision to retreat and inform the nobility of Togli’s death, and form a regency council for the new Khan, Saru, in order to prosecute the inevitable war coming.

And it did come, rapidly--Agdji delayed one day in order to pray for Ituk’s soul and to offer him the use of Togli (killed in combat and sacrificed with all proper rituals) as a slave in the afterlife, but soon returned to the host at Ferghana and declared his intention to ride against the Qarluqs with all speed.

None of the host were uncomfortable with the decision that Agdji made to slay Togli despite the rules of combat--he was weak and their Huangdi was not, and it was as simple as that. But the same could not be said for the Islamic world, which was aghast at the news that one of their own had been killed in cold blood, in total contravention of all of the terms agreed to for their duel.

Agdji initially marched north to capture Zhetisu, the last real Qarluq stronghold, until terrible news reached him: Inal, Shah of Persia, had thrown his lot in with the Qarluqs, and was marching his forces north.

Ituk’s words about Persia’s unbeatable strength echoed in Agdji’s mind, and, looking over his small host, he made his decision immediately.

“South, south, we turn south!” he cried as the host wheeled around him. “To Tashkand, with all speed!”

Thankfully, the Khitan host could still move with extreme rapidity even in the most challenging of terrains. By the beginning of August they had invested Tashkand and, finding it stripped of its garrison (those forces likely marching north to a front the Khitans had already abandoned), quickly sacked the city. Within they found the little Khan, Saru.

The capture of Tashkand by Agdji led to despair among the Qarluqs; they feared he would show his dishonor as he had with Togli and kill the young Khan and his remaining family, or even burn the entire city as he had in all of his other conquests. But, surprisingly, his terms were sane, if punitive: the complete and immediate surrender of Zhetisu, and the effective destruction of the Qarluq Khanate. Only Tashkand would be left to them, and no doubt soon it would fall under the sway of the Seljuks. With the entire royal family captured, the regency council had little choice but to agree to the Huangdi’s demands, and the sacking of Zhetisu soon began.

With it went the last of the Qarluqs.

Later historians would debate whether what Agdji did to the Qarluqs qualified as a genocide. Many would point out that he did not eradicate them wholesale, just their cities and the adult males; their women and children were saved, albeit as slaves, and were permitted to retain their culture and religion if they wished (albeit, de facto, there was immense cultural pressure for them to assimilate). Others noted pointedly that, while a fraction were saved, almost half were killed in one way or another, and the Qarluq identity was entirely destroyed. By the late 20th century scholars had begun to agree that Agdji's eradication of the Qarluqs rose to the level of a genocide, but some noted that the definition of genocide requires intentionality, and these deny that it is even possible to have a deliberate concept of ethnic cleansing in a period before a clear concept of ethnicity even existed. These scholars dispute the classification of genocide not on the basis of outcomes but intentionality, arguing that Agdji clearly did not ever intend the deliberate eradication of any group, but that the Qarluqs, as with many other clans, were merely swept up in the well-documented and highly effective assimilationist policies of the Khitan host, which deliberately subdued the clans they integrated into the Khitan socio-economic structure: the women as slaves and concubines, the boys as adopted children of the host's riders. This assimilatory stance represented the most significant means by which the Khitan grew their population, and was utterly ubiquitous. It was brutal, but highly-effective.

These dissenting scholars--well-intentioned but generally biased by pro-Khitan stances--are correct in that Agdji applied these assimilationist policies to most every group, but they are wrong in thinking that his targeting of the Qarluq was not very deliberate. Agdji did not understand the Qarluq as a 'culture,' and certainly not as an ethnicity, but he DID understand them as a tribe, and it was absolutely his deliberate goal to wipe out their tribal identity. Qarluq culture, language, art… all of it was destroyed, subsumed into the roiling tide of the Khitan. After the destruction of Zhetisu, there were no true Qarluqs left. Agdji had fulfilled his promise to them: to make himself manifest as their destroyer.

One of the many benefits of détente with the Qin was the resumption of scholarly dialogue from the east. Although the Khitans had undeniably withered in their long exile, they were still a writing culture that prized history, and even still utilized many Han forms which they had adopted during their time ruling in China. Restored contact with the Middle Kingdom, even if scholars from the Qin generally disparaged the Khitans and their capabilities, allowed them to remain sharp and abreast of scholarly developments.

Eventually, per the terms of his father's agreement with Agdji, Emperor Chengzu sent a scholar in order to examine the Khitan host and confirm that they continued to uphold their end of the agreement between the two dynasties, and his arrival is precisely what the Khitan court had long desired. Such nobles as Yaerud An, the court physician, and Siau Uldjin, the head of the House of Siau, seek out his knowledge to further their own. And, while he is present, Agdji is not beneath this either. Although he has no desire to personally learn of the classical history of the Middle Kingdom, he does see the benefit of raising a child with such knowledge, and so requests that Chih-yueh teach his daughter, Arel, the ways of writing and of classical Confucian thought while he is present in Kashgar, to which the scholar agrees--after a hefty payment, of course.

As the pacification of Zhetisu dragged on, to their credit it must be said that the Qarluq fought their demise like a cornered wolf. They cursed Togli for his foolishness in facing the Celestial Khan, but they cursed Agdji even more, calling him a devil in human flesh (a further division between Muslims, who tended to see Agdji as a monster, and his own people, who tended to see him as a benevolent ruler). More rebellions took place in Zhetisu than in any other region to date, with the exception of Kashgar itself, where the brutality first began.

Unwittingly on the part of the Qarluq, however, this long guerilla campaign has only served to further strengthen Agdji, teaching him new tactics and unorthodox strategies. Unaccustomed to long campaigns of attrition, the pacification of Zhetisu has taught the Huangdi something of how to reduce enemy forces by employing the same sorts of delaying tactics on them, and allowing them to be gradually bled before striking a final blow. It is, some would say, the last real lesson Agdji needed to learn in order to become a master of the art of mounted warfare.

Asli Kuchet, daughter of one of the many Khans of the north, was easily the most prestigious concubines which Agdji possessed. It was she who directed him to the Berkutchi, and eventually, through them, to Tengri Himself, He who had given Agdji all of his many victories. The glory she had earned the Khitan people, as well as her own great lineage, was more than sufficient for her to live a queenly existence; next to Kyi, Asli was she whom least was demanded of in the whole host, and great wealth was gifted to her for her use as a matter of course.

Despite this, however, Asli laid with the Huangdi rather infrequently. It was not because of any hatred between them; Asli respected Agdji, and Agdji deeply respected her in turn, though he found her personality to be unpalatable. They were simply often apart from one another, and Asli had no desire to involve herself in the quite literally poisonous court politics that could easily arise if she gave birth to a son.

Nevertheless, Agdji made it clear to her that he wished a child of her, so that her blood and his might continue together. With some reluctance Asli agreed to this, and, while Agdji was on campaign in Zhetisu, she became pregnant. Late that winter she gave birth to her first and only child: a daughter, Yaerud Paudun, whose beauty would one day be said to put even her eldest sister Ordelhan’s to shame.

After spending a few months with Asli and little Paudun Agdji set out west for his next campaign in early March. In what was to be a major learning experience for the Huangdi, it took over six months to arrive at the fringes of the lands he claimed, and winter was already beginning its long, slow advance by the time the Khitan host finally bivouacked on the borders of Khan Kitanopa II's territory. Agdji had been this far west before--indeed further, to the shores of the Caspian during his fighting with Girgen Baruq, from whom Kitanopa II had coincidentally inherited his lands--but that had been on a long and circuitous campaign that felt like going in circles. The Huangdi had never believed that a direct and uninterrupted ride would take so long, not with his fast host of well-trained riders. It set the Emperor to thinking about the scale of his conquests, and for once not just the implications it would have on warfare. How was he to manage clans that were destined to be so far from Kashgar that it would take them as much as a year to send any word to him? Was his mission, his singular goal in life, folly--was it even possible to hold such a mass of people together over such great distances?

The unexpectedly introspective Huangdi, already frustrated by the onset of winter and the necessity of campaigning in the cold, decided to vent his anger and uncertainty on Kitanopa immediately. If he was worried about being able to hold the Khitan together, the best medicine, as the Huangdi saw it, was simply to push them west as fast as he could.

The Qipchaqs, as they had before, had sought to organize their army rapidly and sneak it behind the Khitan forces. This time, though Agdji had anticipated the maneuver, the Khan had utterly surprised him by organizing his men in the freezing north, indeed so far north that Agdji had not thought it possible that so many could be gathered there without starving in mere weeks. Fully a thousand riders more than his own host in size, the Qipchaq force slipped past Agdji and threatened the Khitan herds in Irgiz. Agdji was forced to wheel rapidly to face them, but it was all but certain that they would arrive in Irgiz first, and the Khitan forces would be on the offensive in inadequate terrain.

Already frustrated by the weather and the slowness of his host's march east, Agdji only grew more irate at being outflanked by the Qipchaqs; by the time Agdji arrives in Irgiz he is in no mood to play with his fellow Khan. He rushes to battle, and soon the Khitan host is engaged with the numerically larger but under-equipped Qipchaq force, and winning handily.

It is in the midst of this days-long battle, at Agdji’s yurt one evening, that an urgent runner arrives from Kashgar. Almost white with fear, the runner hands to the Huangdi a missive from Yaerud An, whom Agdji left in charge of spy-work in his absence. It contains the worst possible news:

The Lady Purgyal was the type of woman Agdji feared she was. She is planning the death of his eldest son, and his eldest sister Ordelhan, the woman who raised him--she for whom he named his first daughter!--is assisting her.

The Huangdi’s rage was indescribable. He had to be physically held back from mounting his horse and riding all the way back to Kashgar to personally “beat them to death with my own hands!” as he ceaselessly screamed. Eventually, after hours of restraining him, the Emperor’s fury calmed from white-hot to a silent, vengeful wrath. He controlled and composed himself and withdrew to his yurt, with orders not to be disturbed until the morning.

Agdji spent hours in quiet consideration and prayer, seeking answers about how to proceed. Even with his fury chilled to a silent hatred, he still wished the death of both his wife and sister. How could he not have SEEN? Kyi had been growing distant from him ever since he had requested a child of Asli, and, of course, with Aerlu’on being nine years old and all but of age to ride with the host, she would choose now to make her move. With Agdji far from the camps and Aerlu’on of an age where his death could easily be taken as a horrible accident or sudden sickness, now was the most dangerous time for the young boy.

But why Ordelhan? Why his eldest sister, she who was all but a mother to him? He could not understand. She spent more time at the present with Aerlu’on than Agdji did; did she see something he did not? Did Kyi promise her something? Had she somehow grown to hate him? Agdji had no answers.

Eventually, after a very long time, Agdji wrote a brief message and handed it to the runner to take back to Kashgar. Tengri willing, it would arrive with An in time to save his son’s life.

“I did not become my father,” he whispered as the messenger rode away. “I did not kill my own family by my own hands, nor have I let the murder go. Dashi’s curse has come to me, but I have not destroyed my family over it. It is all that could be hoped for.”

Though he spoke the words, even he did not believe them. Somewhere he had failed, like Dashi had.

When An received the Emperor’s orders he thought them surprisingly mild, compared to what he had expected. Kyi was to be stripped of all titles, imprisoned, put on starvation rations, and denied all human contact until she either starved to death or committed suicide. Ordelhan, in recognition for what she had done for Agdji and her pure blood relation to him, was to be spared a similar fate; she would be forced to convert to Tengrism at threat of death, and, should she accept, would only be forced to retire to the Tengri holy place at Emil to serve as the priestess facilitating offerings to Dashi: a prestigious role, if one far-removed from the seat of power.

Ordelhan accepted her punishment with quiet grace, going into exile in Emil never to see or hear from her brother again. Not so Kyi. Agdji was later told that she spat and hissed like a cat, clawing and struggling against the men who took her to her new prison and sewed her inside it, forever to be cast off from the outside world. It was expected that this would please Agdji, and in some small part it did, but it made him feel more hollow than anything. He had never truly loved Kyi, but he had built a rapport with her, and with the other Purgyal. To toss her away like he had, to die a slow death of madness and hunger, seemed unmanly. It was difficult to see it as the more just path, one which absolved his own hand of association with the death of his wife. He would struggle for many years to convince himself that it was.

Although the seeds of Agdji's harsh misogyny had been sowed from his youngest days fighting for his right to rule against his father's wife Tabuyen and suffering the feeling of being unmanned around the girls of the camp, and although this prejudice had indeed had long been accelerating (Agdji's willingness to rape his concubines Sevindik and Vimala rather than simply letting them free and seeking the affections of one of the thousands of Khitan women who would have been happy to warm his bed is the strongest indication of this), heretofore his distaste for women had been rising only in proportion to the general brutality with which he led the Khitan. The betrayal of Ordelhan and Kyi shattered any feeling of love for a woman that Agdji had: the closest he would ever come again was a broken half-love, built more on exerting control than experiencing trust.

From this moment onward, to all but this broken woman to whom Agdji would give a pale reflection of his heart, the Huangdi was utilitarian. Women would come and they would go, they would die and they would live, and he would not care. They were women. They were duplicitous, false, and weak--beneath his notice.

As he never had before, Agdji threw himself into battle. After the imprisonment of his wife and exile of his sister, the Emperor was possessed by fury, betrayal, and impotent rage. He took out all of these emotions on the enemies arrayed against him--and there were many. The Burcalids had at least ten thousand riders all told under their command from various different clans and vassals, and Agdji waged war against them as if they were Qarluqs, and he plotting out their extermination. It was a merciless conflict, the likes of which the Qipchaqs had never experienced before. They were not prepared to fight an enemy as driven, or as skilled, as the Celestial Khan.

Even so, the single-minded prosecution of a war seemed to be unable to save the Huangdi from the intrusion of ill news. Sevindik Aepakid, the same concubine whom Agdji's love of abusing had contributed to his growing misogyny, had died. Long gripped by horrible depression over Agdji’s frequent use of her body against her will, she had complained of some slight pain recently, and then simply died. It was unclear whether she had been poisoned or if she was simply tired of life and left it at the first opportunity.

Yet Agdji was not aggrieved by her death, he was annoyed by it--now he was forced to replace her.

Over some days, he came to the conclusion that he had been too lenient on the women around him--he had not controlled them and accounted for their petty natures, as he should have, and his father should have before him. He chose, then, to replace Sevindik with a young girl, Barskhan Gulcicek. Daughter of a minor Qarluq lord, Gulcicek had been in captivity for many years, and had willingly adopted Khitan customs and the Tengri religion, turning her back on her people and their traditions. She was young and easily malleable, and in her Agdji saw hope for someone whom he could mold into the perfect woman.

The war, despite taking over a year, is still handled in impressively brief fashion, given that the Khitan host fought against the full strength of the Burcalids and all their vassals, yet refused to call in the support of either of their own two governates. It was proof, if any needed it, that Agdji and Agdji alone could easily defeat any other rider on the steppe, and the beginning of the recognition of the other Khans that the title Celestial Khan was not merely words, but a threat. It explicitly set Agdji above them, and they began to realize, too late, that Agdji meant to prove it to them all.

Present on the long campaign was one of Agdji’s flank commanders, one Sagay. Sagay was no Khitan; though it was becoming more rare as the other peoples of the steppe gradually began to view the Khitan as an existential threat, at the time this any foreigner could still lay down their tribe-allegiance and swear to the Khitan. This typically voided the swearer's right to any advancement, leaving them little better than slaves, but it at least guaranteed equal treatment for their children. Sagay, skilled as he was, was a rare exception: despite being a member of the distant Qazar tribe, he was so skilled in martial games that Agdji personally took an interest in him and raised him up to lead his left flank.

On the long campaign--Sagay's first full ride with the host--he was consistently impressed with Agdji’s mastery of tactics and, especially, the maneuver of his horses. Many times he remarked that it seemed like the Khitans were born to be in the saddle, and they fought--especially with Agdji at their head--as men possessed.

But it could also be refined further, and this Sagay set to, teaching Agdji many new tactics of warfare and, especially, uses of cavalry in the plains, which the Khitans had proven shockingly unaccustomed to due to their long isolation in the mountainous territory around Kashgar. With the mastery of warfare on the great open steppe made known to them, Sagay made it clear that he did not believe that even the mighty Seljuks could stand in the way of Agdji’s inevitable advance.

Following the defeat of the Burcalids Agdji returns to Kashgar to be present in time for the birthday of his son, Aerlu’on. Although Aerlu'on's mother Vimala is still alive, the death of Sevindik and imprisonment of Kyi is certain to weigh heavily on the thoughts of all of his children, and Agdji does not wish their lives to be filled with the uncertainty and sorrow that his own siblings’ were growing up under Dashi. Instead, in honor of Aerlu’on’s tenth birthday and his imminent joining of the host to learn the ways of war alongside his father, Agdji calls for a great celebration: another set of martial games, hosted in Aerlu’on’s honor.

In some ways, Agdji is disappointed with his decision. Aerlu’on proves to be timid and somewhat entitled. Rather than viewing the games and being riveted by the warriors’ actions in his name, he spends much of the time hiding behind the skirts of his mother. Agdji is convinced this cowardly shyness was instilled in the boy by his mother, and leads Agdji to the conclusion that all of his sons should be raised by him personally in the future, and so it is decided that both Aerlu’on and little Agdji would join the Huangdi on campaign immediately.

Yet the opposite kind of behavior is already evident in the young Agdji. Willful but considerate of others and grieving the absence of his mother, little Agdji was overjoyed to see his father’s return, and spent many days alongside him, even taking part in a mock battle at his behest. One of Agdji’s riders allowed the little one to strike him with a fake spear, and great laugher and cry of praise for the “little warrior” went up--a memory which the young Agdji would cherish for the rest of his life.

The Huangdi unsurprisingly wins the bouts handily, with no other rider coming close. In his victory he notably dedicates the honor to both of his eldest sons, Aerlu’on and Agdji. It is not quite a chastisem*nt, but for games held in Aerlu’on’s honor, it is clear which of his sons has best caught his eye: Agdji, son of Kyi.

The same tournament sees Gulcicek come of age as a moderately skilled rider. She participated in the bouts, as all Khitan women were permitted to (though within the year Agdji would forbid women from riding as warriors in anything but games of sport, mistrusting their abilities), but was quickly defeated. Although her status as Agdji’s woman prevented her from being mocked, privately the riders could not help but chuckle at her; absent-minded and with a pronounced stutter, they noted that she was very much the type of woman which Agdji was looking for: too much of a joke for anyone to take seriously and plot alongside.

Still, Agdji is pleased with her. She has turned her back on her people and on Islam, which was alone commendable, but also proved at least competent in the arts of war. She may not be impressive in her own right, but she is obedient and eager to please--exactly what Agdji wants.

Seeking to teach his sons of the importance of war to the Khitan people, Agdji makes the decision to strike out against the Seljuks, to determine whether or not, as Sagay boasted, the Khitans would be able to survive a sustained conflict with them.

Luckily for the Huangdi, this is not tested; the Seljuks are preoccupied with wars in a faraway land, and cannot defend their border. But this means that much of their wealth is open for the taking, and, with a treasury constantly draining despite the best efforts of the Emperor, the opportunity is too tempting to resist.

As the Khitan host descends upon Jand and begins ransacking the settlements therein, Aerlu’on and little Agdji are taken alongside the Huangdi through the territory, to see the orders their father gives, and the purpose of the raid.

Yet the elder boy, Aerlu’on, is frightened without the presence of his mother, whom he has spent his entire life with, and intimidated by his father; he is quiet. It is little Agdji who speaks often, and asks serious questions of his father.

“Papa, why do we do this?” he asked as the Seljuk fortification at Jand went up in smoke behind them.

“Why do we raid? For wealth, son. We must purchase what we need from others, because we cannot make most of it ourselves.” Agdji despised admitting how limited they were, but he also could not lie to his eventual successors.

Little Agdji’s face scrunched up, but eventually he shook his head. “No, I mean why… why do we destroy so much? Couldn’t we just make them give us what we wanted? Wouldn’t we be able to take more slaves if we didn’t kill so many?”

"That’s would be true," Agdji replied, "but you must remember, the steppe is not our final home. We seek to weaken the border settlements of our enemies as well as to seize their wealth, and burning them makes it more difficult for them to resist in the future. We will need to raid these lands again, perhaps many times, to gain the goods we will need to keep moving west."

In order to commemorate his victory in the tournament, as well as to celebrate the ascension of Aerlu’on to the age of martial training, back in the late summer Agdji had requested a skilled smith among the Khitans, one Sinelger, to forge a great lance, to serve as the martial symbol of the Yaerud clan. Not only would this be the pinnacle of Khitan craftsmanship, blending the techniques of the Middle Kingdom and the skillful Persian forging processes, it would also simply serve as an improvement over the utilitarian weapons which Agdji had used to this point--a good, quality lance would be of great help on the field of battle.

Following the sack of Jand and an influx of new slaves, wealth and materials, however, Agdji makes it known to Sinelger that these will also be placed at his disposal, to use at his need. He is to create a symbol not just of the Yaerud, but the great weapon of the entire Liao dynasty, and a remembrance of the first raid that Agdji ever took his sons on.

In the words of the Huangdi, “it must be unparalleled.”

And so it was.

As Agdji wintered in Kashgar awaiting the arrival of spring and new opportunities for war, Sinelger presented to him his great work: the Spear of the Destroyer, Agdji’s Arm. Perfectly balanced, with intricate designing fit for the Huangdi and forged of mighty steel of the kind of Damas, far to the west, the spear was truly what Agdji had demanded of it: unparalleled. Its like would never before have been seen in either the west or east, being a fusion of both cultures, utilizing technologies which neither had experienced in their totality.

The spear, though it would not even occur to Agdji at the time, was a representation of what the Khitans themselves sought to be: an eastern concept, changed and reshaped by the west, but still rooted first and foremost in the memory of their distant home. Its long tassels, intricate carvings, and Chinese characters, inlaid in gold, were all evidence of the culture in which the great weapon was steeped. And, if that were not enough, did not it being a cavalry lance alone give away that it was a Khitan weapon, made for those born to the saddle?

A matter which had long been on Agdji’s mind but never in his direct presence soon calls him forth from the front to Emil, the place of his birth and his father’s reign, which he had not personally returned to since he had first left it on his campaigns. The first section of the great monument to Dashi has been completed, but the work has been greatly delayed, and Agdji’s men have requested another large subsidy in order to complete the monument.

The Huangdi brings along with him his eldest sons, and along the way he shows them many of the places of his youth: the old field where he fought his first duel, the place where the camps once lay, and even the spot where Kyi and he had been married, though his words here were bittersweet.

When the three of them caught sight of the monument gleaming in the sun, however, their breath was taken from them.

Built on a slab of seemingly solid marble at least two meters tall, a great bronze sculpture, which must have itself been the height of at least two men, was half-completed. It was the flanks of a great, rearing horse, which Agdji knew to be Dragon, the horse which Dashi rode upon from the Middle Kingdom to the west. On each of the four sides of the pillar which supported the statue, great plaques displayed long paragraphs of the story of the Khitans, from their first rise in the east to their fall, defeat, and exile. The final plaque, facing due west, told of the life of Dashi, the Savior, and his wish: the mountain of his dreams, one behind which the Khitan people would find all the luxuries which their long suffering made theirs by right.

For the first time, Agdji’s sons saw him weep, as he knelt before the plaque and beseeched his father to find him worthy of fulfilling his destiny. The money for the completion of the monument was dear, but it was paid immediately, and in full. Agdji would not have his people forget his father.

An unusually pensive Agdji rode to the far west to rejoin his host shortly thereafter, which had been raiding Burcalid territory around Itil, on the Volga river delta. His sons were also quiet, unsure of how to respond after seeing their father’s breakdown; to them, as with most boys, their father was the strongest man in the world. But in the case of Aerlu'on and Agdji the Younger, this was not merely childish fantasy, but something of a rational conclusion: their father was Huangdi, warlord, unbeaten and unstoppable. Despite everything that they had learned of Dashi and what he had done for the Khitan people, compared to Agdji’s ever-mounting legend, they could not understand the importance of their grandfather, or what Dashi meant to their father. It was Agdji’s curse to surpass Dashi, such that the shadow of Agdji's deeds would cast his father's victories into darkness, and make it impossible for any who had not lived through Dashi's days to truly understand what Father Khitan had done for them.

It was Gulcicek who was eventually able to calm Agdji and draw him out of his pained introspection, and he spent many nights with her, telling her about his father, who was now also a father to her.

Although the timelines did not align, Gulcicek did become pregnant soon thereafter. It was clear that she had actually become pregnant on the way to Emil, but both she and Agdji chose to believe that it was a sign of Dashi: a blessing of the current Emperor, and an approval of his choice in Gulcicek as his new chief woman.

This sign also perhaps precipitated Agdji’s next rash decision: the invasion of Persia.

It was not, of course, an invasion of Persia in truth; Agdji had no intention to ride to the empire’s heartland. And he did have enough presence of mind, at least, to declare the invasion at a time when the Shah was still distracted by foreign wars, and thus might allow Agdji to ransack the frontier with impunity. But it was still, for the first time, a proper war: one with the goal of seizing the Dasht-e-Qipchaq, the furthest point north which the Seljuks had occupied, and pushing the Seljuk frontier back towards Persia.

The men and women of the host were on edge. Rumors had it that the Shah could summon forth an army almost comparable with the might of the Middle Kingdom; they feared that they would be utterly enveloped and destroyed, even led by Agdji, the greatest warrior any of them had ever known, as they were.

“I was prophesied by my father,” Agdji told them before they took to the march, “to shake the mountains with the thunder of my deeds. I cannot do this if we never face a real threat! The mountain of my father’s dreams is still far away, in the furthest west; this is but a small challenge, the beginning of greater things to come. Do not fear it!”

The raid against the Seljuks is a time of great tension among the Khitan, and for Agdji especially. Ituk had warned him years before that he was not ready to face the Shah, and Sugr, Ituk’s son and heir, agreed with his father’s conclusions still; against the might of Persia, it was the height of foolishness to send but 6,000 souls. Sugr had a large part organizing the raid from his position overseeing the host at Kashgar, and had continually attempted to dissuade the Huangdi. Yet despite his best efforts Agdji had continually refused to hear sense, growing more and more determined to test his strength against the Shah. His defeat of the Burcalids had proven that he was the only lord of any merit on the steppe, and so it seemed to him that the Shah was the only enemy worthy of proving himself against. Thus, even though he was warned from all quarters of the madness of his decision, Agdji pushed forward with the war regardless.

Had any claimed that Agdji was foolishly risking his men’s lives, they might well be correct; had they claimed that he was underestimating the Seljuks, however, they would be terribly mistaken. Even as the Khitan host ripped south through Tashkand Agdji spends almost every waking hour of the day preoccupied with sketches of the terrain, reports from scouts, and planning the day’s riding. Every mile south places a greater and greater weight on the Emperor’s mind, and soon the war consumes him entirely.

In his isolation, matters of his children fall to his new chief woman, Gulcicek. She is the one who makes the decision to override the Huangdi and educate his eldest daughter, Arel, in the arts of faith and scholarship, and, when she gives birth to the Emperor’s newest child, it is she who names the babe: Telbe, destined to be the Huangdi's favorite daughter.

Gulcicek’s actions on the Emperor’s behalf, even her decision to upend Agdji’s plans for Arel, will be retroactively approved by the Huangdi that winter, and even praised. And why not? The Emperor is ebullient by the time he learns of them. After the fall of Tashkand and Bunjiket, the local representative of the Shah, Dukak Anushtiginlar, sued for peace on behalf of Inal Seljuk. The war—if it could even be called such—was over.

Agdji had burned a vast swathe of the Seljuk frontier in but a few months, and forced the Shah’s capitulation. It was a clear line in the sand: beyond the Shah’s shrinking frontiers was the steppe, and the steppe was ruled solely by the Huangdi.

Even though no battles were fought and Agdji’s forces had therefore not been truly tested, the Emperor’s ability to defeat the Seljuks without ever catching sight of them is in some ways viewed as even more impressive by the Khitans, and further stokes his already legendary status among them. Although there are still notable holdouts (Sugr among them), most of Agdji’s riders are willing to admit that he is greater even than the Shah.

Most notable of those holdouts, though, is Agdji himself. The Huangdi feels cheated out of the test of his prowess he desired, and unfulfilled despite the long and successful campaign.

Agdji shortly thereafter begins a new series of raids against the Shah, to assuage his frustrations at being denied his great challenge. The territories he intends to raid, from Ustrushana northwest to Jand, encompass the same path which he fought through in his initial invasion, and this by design. These regions have already been ransacked and their garrisons largely exterminated by the march of his forces, and they will be unprepared for his army passing through more slowly, carrying away women and goods.

The nature of the raids are so forthright that the Huangdi spends time administering matters of family and court while nominally overseeing them. First and foremost on his mind is the matter of matchmaking for his two eldest daughters, Ordelhan and Arel.

Ordelhan, despite unfortunately sharing the name of Agdji’s once-beloved sister now turned traitor and exile, has grown to become a pretty young woman who, despite her carefully-maintained good looks, is a rider born and bred. Although this makes her almost the polar opposite of her cousin Uldjin, nevertheless as Agdji had insisted to Kyi all those years before, the two are wed at his request. The Siau, despite everything Tabuyen did to sour their good name, are still one of the oldest noble houses of the Khitan, and the most firmly loyal to the Yaerud; it is a debt the Liao must spend many years to repay.

Of course, there is a debt owed which is even greater: that which is owed to the heirs of Ituk, brother of Kopti, last lords of the Uighur people, he who came to the service of Dashi in his darkest hour and became the savior of the Khitans in their exile. Although the Lords Daerqa believe that they owe everything to the Liao, in the mind of Agdji it is a much more reciprocal relationship, and one which, importantly, began with the free offering of service from Kopti and Ituk. The Yaerud clan was placed in debt first, and its needs at the time were more dire.

Thus, when Agdji learns that Sugr’s wife Niauraq had died of an embarrassing illness which had soured Sugr’s relations with her in her final days, the Huangdi naturally seeks to reaffirm their friendship and close allegiance by offering him the hand of his second-eldest daughter, the scholar-child Arel. Wise beyond her years and strong of body, it is hoped that the young woman will please Sugr well, and guide him and his people to many more years of prosperity.

The Lord Daerqa naturally accepts this kingly gift with grace, writing to Agdji that “the hand of a Liao princess has rested now in the hands of two Lords of the Daerqa, and the price for the honor of knowing my mother and my wife will be nothing less than eternal service.” It is perhaps somewhat more flowery in its language than Agdji thought necessary, but it is clear that Sugr is sincere. What to Agdji is merely just is the highest honor to Sugr.

Away in the far west, far from the Huangdi’s concern or notice, the Third Crusade is declared: a Crusade to recapture the Holy Land and to secure it in the name of Christendom, after the realms of Aegyptus and Jerusalem faltered even despite the great success of the Second Crusade.

Rebellions in Jerusalem, as well as tribal invasions of Aegyptus, had depleted the noble knights therein capable of defending the realms, and soon in Jerusalem’s northern territory a lord calling himself Muzahim had seized the territory of Damas and proclaimed himself Sultan there. He proved a strategic mastermind, launching several assaults on Jerusalem which eventually destroyed the Kingdom utterly. Egypt, facing tribal invasion from the west itself, was incapable of coming to its defense, and was soon reduced to only holding a few sparse territories around Alexandria; a Kingdom only in name, lost to Christendom.

Pope Ioannes XXI seeks to reverse these trends by re-establishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem from the realm of Muzahim, pushing the Sultan back towards Damas and once more securing the coast to Christianity, which might then, the Holy Father hopes, push deeper into the interior given time.

As usual, however, the concerns of Christendom are far from the mind of the Huangdi, and indeed absent entirely; the Emperor has yet to hear of Christianity as a religion. The few Nestorians that occupied his vast domain have long since been rounded up and enslaved along with all the other Qipchaqs or Qarluqs taken under the Khitan banner, and so the Huangdi is only generally aware of Buddhism, Tengrism and Islam. But even vague word of the Crusade does not reach the Khitans from Persia, as the Great Seljuk is largely indifferent to the travails of his fellow Muslims to the west.

His attention still far from focused, it is little surprise the Huangdi spends much of his newfound time and wealth addressing other, seemingly more pressing concerns. Much of the wealth gathered from the ongoing raid against the Seljuks is gathered and given over to a great suit of armor intended to protect the Huangdi’s life against any threat, on the battlefield or off. Many months are spent in its construction, but eventually the Emperor is presented with a beautiful suit of armor made of interlocked steel mail, entirely in the style of the Middle Kingdom. Its ornamentation is utterly foreign to the people of the west, and the Huangdi’s Guardian will soon become an easy means of identifying the Celestial Khan. Only he could afford a suit of armor so beautiful.

Agdji spent several months in Kashgar resting and planning for his next campaign, and during this time he spent several weeks with his cousin and spymaster, Yaerud An, discussing the nature of the civil war in the Middle Kingdom. An was insistent that the Qin were on their last, desperate defense and that a strike by the Liao now could restore their dynasty to the throne, but Agdji was, as ever, unwilling to betray those he had given his word to.

“They are meddlesome,” An insisted. “They involve themselves in our affairs constantly, demand payments of us, draw forth strength and horses from our host… why would we not strike?”

An’s tone was almost accusatory, and Agdji chose his words carefully.

“I do not deny that the… impositions of the Qin are unwelcome. But I made an agreement with them in good faith. Even had I not, we cannot return to the Middle Kingdom now. We are not yet sufficiently changed as a people; we would return no different than we were when we took up the mantle of the Liao: pagan horse-riders. There is still too much of the steppe in us.”

“You have changed everything about yourself, such that your Lord father would not recognize you,” An insisted. “Despite all this, despite how wrong Dashi was for so much of his life, in this you choose to believe him?”

An had expected hesitation, but instead Agdji swiftly nodded. “My father made mistakes, but he was not wrong in this. The Han are a civilized people, and to rule them we must take on those same trappings. We are exiled from the east, and so we must find civilization in the west.”

An was not utterly convinced. But, despite this, he trusted in Agdji, and was placated enough to agree to side with the Qin in their civil war, sending an aged retainer of the Huangdi to Emperor Yangzong to serve as a field commander.

While organizing a further expansion of the Khitan host out of Kashgar, Agdji spent many days with Gulcicek, whom he had not seen in over a year. In their time together Gulcicek became pregnant and, shortly before Agdji left on his journey back west, gave birth to his fourth son.

Although Agdji was not present to witness the child’s birth, and indeed would not see him for the first time for several years, he had left orders with Gulcicek regarding the names of his future child, should she give birth in his absence. He absolutely demanded that, should any son be born of his blood, he should be named not for Dashi, as Gulcicek had preferred, but for his mentor, the Savior of the Liao: Ituk.

Younger than the next-youngest of Agdji’s sons, Ago, by almost a full decade, little Ituk was destined for a life much different than that of his martially-inclined elder brothers.

Agdji would not see his son Ituk for such a long while due to being on campaign, first against the Burcalid Khan for control of the territory of Samar. For the first time, it will be a war for territory which Agdji does not actually believe he needs; Samar is a cold and rather inhospitable territory during the winter, and does very little to push the Khitan host further west. It is only required to strike there due to the Seljuk presence to the south, at Sarisu around the Volga river delta. Unable to bypass the Shah’s territories there and unwilling to wage war against them while they are at peace as they now are, the Khitan must instead push northwest in order to be able to outflank the Seljuk salient.

The Burcalid Khan used to be quite powerful, able to raise some ten thousand horses to his name, but the loss of Yaik to Agdji some years before has weakened him considerably, and by the time the war for Samar is declared Atrak Khan has little over five thousand horse. If ten thousand could not defeat Agdji son of Dashi, how might five thousand?

After playing a game of cat-and-mouse with the enemy cavalry across hundreds of kilometers, eventually Agdji corners the enemy in Suvar. Here he gives Aerlu’on and Agdji the Younger sub-command of each of his flanks, and, even while operating with such inexperienced riders, is able to achieve an easy victory against the enemy, suffering barely over a hundred losses while utterly exterminating the enemy host.

It is the end of the Burcalid Khanate. But begets something new: Agdji’s legend among his sons.

The Khitan as a whole know of their Huangdi's skill in war and regard him as a martial genius, but his sons are young, and have had little experience with his mastery of war to this point. At Suvar, his sons first saw the unparalleled skill of their father. Both Aerlu’on and Agdji the Younger see their father as nigh-infallible, much as Agdji saw Dashi in his youth. Their father’s unparalleled grasp of strategy and tactics would inform their growth into men, but, more than that, it would also inform how they passed the memory of Agdji down into history: infallible and undefeatable, he would pass from man to myth.

Immediately after the successful conquest of Samar, despite a lack of firm Khitan control of the territory, Agdji launches a follow-up campaign to seize part of the Moksva territory, on the west bank of the Volga river. The wars are against a strange and weak pagan people to the north whom Agdji has little interest in, and the self-styled ruler of Sharkil, Sharukan, called a tyrant by his own people. Neither are of particular importance, but the territory itself is: the Volga is the first great river the Khitans have been forced to cross since their exodus from the Middle Kingdom, and with their arrival on its great banks there is a sense among the host that they are beginning, at long last, to draw near to their final goal.

“The mountain of my father’s dreams,” Agdji told his companions while standing on its banks, “is not in sight. But this river tells me that change is here: the terrain itself is different. Our future home lies not far now across the horizon!”

At these words his riders cried out, and his sons joined him in raising their spears as they forded the great river. It would be years more, perhaps--but the rest they sought was growing nigh.

Far to the south the Third Crusade finds success, investing Gentile d’Appiano as King of Jerusalem, the seventh Christian to hold that title. Although the Christians have victory, it is a hard-fought one with, perhaps, little chance of long-term survival. The Kingdom of Egypt is reduced to but two territories in Aegyptus, and although the genius warrior Muzahim and his son Fasil were both killed in the Crusade, the Muzahimid Sultanate is still a formidable threat--not to mention the holdings of the Caliph in the region, who controls much of south-central Jerusalem.

Notably, the Third Crusade is the first religious war which Agdji hears of, through his peoples’ new land border with the Seljuks in Sari-Su. Rumors of a great war to the south-and-west which the Seljuk Shah refused to participate in despite being called forth to defend his people are of great interest, and duly relayed to the Huangdi, who, misunderstanding the conflict for authority between the Shah and Caliph, believes the Shah’s refusal to fight to be a sign of Seljuk weakness.

Victory against Chief Setyamka and Sharukan the Tyrant was guaranteed the moment the hooves of the Khitan steeds touched the grass of the west-Volga, and so it is little surprise when the conflict is ended before two months are out. As before the territories are looted and burned so that no buildings but farmsteads are left standing, and Khitans and Khitans alone are permitted to ride there: the furious march of the Khitan people across the steppe continues, now into tribal lands not typically of interest to a nomadic people.

But, for Agdji, simple acquisition of these territories is not now sufficient. Khitan lands have grown to a truly immense extent, such that riding from the furthest west to their people’s seat at Kashgar takes almost a year of constant travel even in ideal circ*mstances. The east is well-governed by governors Miguniai Aerlu’on and Shulu Cha II (son of Shulu Aerlu’on), but the west has no governance but that which is provided by Agdji, and the Huangdi must necessarily return to the east periodically.

To resolve this, another governate is created for the west. At its head Agdji raises Turburur Baisha-an, surprising many within the host; he is a rather unimpressive warrior whose only redeeming quality is his passable subtlety and vague familiarity with underhanded tactics, a set of skills which no Khitan considers honorable, and few are willing to practice. He had not even previously held sub-command of a flank.

While many murmur about Agdji’s choice of leader for the region, the Huangdi has a clear rationale behind it which is impressed upon Baisha-an from the start.

“Atrak Khan must die,” the Emperor instructed Baisha-an the day of his ascension. “I do not care about the means; the Burcalids must collapse, and with all haste. You have been given your power to see this done; achieve it, in my name.”

“It will be so, Huangdi,” the rider bowed. His skill in war might be small, but his loyalty was great. Great enough to obscure the dishonor of his Emperor.

Baisha-an requested that the Huangdi undertake a raid against the Bolgars in order to distract the Burcalids from his efforts, and the Emperor assented, riding his host north to seize wealth and women from the Muslims there. It is upon this raid that the Emperor’s eldest surviving son, Aerlu’on, is acknowledged as a man grown before the whole of the host.

To claim that Aerlu’on was disappointing would be to lie; he was comely, strong, a fair hand in personal combat and a skilled tactician, learning as he had at the feet of his father. He was proud without being overbearing, while maintaining a patient diligence which saw him quietly organize matters to fall into his lap with a skill that made it appear easy.

But Aerlu’on did not exist in a vacuum; he was constantly being compared to his younger brother Agdji, and whereas Aerlu’on was exceptional alone, compared to Agdji he was often found lacking by his father. The young Agdji lacked patience, but he was stronger than his elder brother already, as well as being abnormally tall, more ambitious, less shy; he even fought better than his elder brother. In context, Aerlu’on was less impressive. He was still the young boy hiding behind the skirts of his mother.

Yet Agdji did not embarrass Aerlu'on, and, the day he became a man, introduced him to the host as his son and heir. Until Agdji came of age, at least, it would be true; but should Agdji prove the greater, as the Huangdi had promised Kyi all those years ago, he would be the one to rule.

Pleasant news soon arrives in Kashgar, as the Qin Emperor sends notice that the rebels within the Middle Kingdom have been exterminated, due in large part to the continued support of the Liao. The various pretenders who had conspired against Qin rule have been utterly defeated in a single great campaign, and, with his rule stabilizing and power restored, the Emperor is pleased to note the Liao’s continued adherence to their agreement for the entire duration of the civil war. Loyalty which will not be forgotten, the Emperor assures Agdji.

Of course, there is an element of the civil war that has not yet gone away, of which neither Agdji nor Yangzong is yet aware. Grave danger approaches.

A large army of soldiers, bedraggled and marching hard, has arrived within the Tarim Basin. At its head rides Huangdi Tou Chim, the Lord Chu, Emperor of China.

It one of the worst-case scenarios for the Khitan. A rival claimant to the throne of the Middle Kingdom has arrived in their territory, a martial lord bringing with him soldiers and techniques from China. He has no treaty with them, does not recognize the Liao as a Dynasty, and seeks control of the Middle Kingdom and all who lay claim to it. His force numbers greater than that of Agdji’s host, and he is within marching distance of Kashgar; he could arrive there and seize it before Agdji could even be notified of his arrival. Only a direct invasion from China or Mongolia could possibly be worse.

The response to the Lord Chu’s arrival is, unsurprisingly, total panic.

Sugr, the Lord Daerqa, is the one who seizes control of the situation and organizes Khitan resistance. Ordering that the enemy host should not be directly assaulted unless it shows signs of marching on Kashgar, Shulu Cha is given orders by the Lord Regent to track the enemy host with his riders and inform Kashgar of all its moves. Meanwhile, Miguniai Aerlu’on’s fastest riders are requisitioned and given orders to ride hard--to ride their beasts to death, if need be--to reach Agdji in the furthest west.

Even riding their mounts to exhaustion, it will be almost one full year before they can reach the Huangdi.

Chapter 5: The Bringer of Change, Pt. IV - The Chu Dynasty

Chapter Text

Blissfully unaware of the grave threat which has arrived in the east, the Huangdi is preoccupied at present with his underhanded plan to oversee the invasion of the fertile plains beneath the Don and Volga rivers, which he had heard rumors of from merchants traveling east over the Road of Silk for many a year.

Governor Baisha-an had done his duty and found a time when Atrak would be surveying his host, out in the open. Agdji duly moved his own host nearby, and sent a riding party of ten horse-archers to ambush Atrak. The archers were able to strike down the Khan, but were outridden and captured before they could escape. Their features, and especially their mounts, gave them away clearly: they were Khitan, and, as Agdji’s host was encamped nearby, Agdji was undoubtedly the final source of the order.

It is the end of the Khitan people’s insistence that Agdji was a kind, benevolent ruler: he never was, and never would be. The word which best-described Agdji was pragmatic. He would do whatever was needed for his people. At Kashgar, all those years ago, that involved staying the hands of his host and directing them to aiding the wounded; in this moment, the death of Atrak and the continued relentless push west, through whatever means were necessary, was of greatest importance. He would--and did--gladly stoop to tactics which the rest of the Khitan found dishonorable whenever they were necessary. Sugr was personally disgusted with the decision, but the Huangdi’s riders and governors understood it. Agdji was the strongest: it was his right to take what he wished, if he could. This day, Atrak’s life was the price, and the Khan had not proven strong enough to keep hold of it.

The death of Atrak was met with a mixture of fury and utter indignation by his people, and especially his young successor, Khan Asep. He demanded a duel of honor with Agdji, but rather than responding to the petty Khan’s demands, the Huangdi instead met Asep’s indignation with the points of 8,000 spears, riding hard into his lands and eradicating his petty Khanate, burning the last farmsteads of his people and capturing his family. With his defeat, so ends the Burcalid Khanate; what was once the largest and most powerful Khanate on the steppe, destroyed in less than a decade.

Following Asep’s defeat, Khan Bachman, the nomad-lord of Sarpa, is also invaded and forced to capitulate, allowing Agdji’s host to fully outflank the Seljuks in Sari-Su. The news is greeted with great fanfare by the host, which anticipates an imminent invasion of the Shahdom.

But then, word finally arrives from the Kashgar. The would-be Chu Emperor is on the move.

At the orders of the Lord Daerqa, the host of Shulu Cha had not engaged the army of Tou Chim, and instead had only observed him from a distance, always retreating before his advance.

It is clear that word of the Liao was heavily circ*mscribed within China, if not outright banned. Chim expected to find civilization still in the Tarim Basin, not endless empty plains and rolling desert, along with the burned-out husks of old buildings and cities. The host spent several weeks looking for remnants of the people they had expected to find there before, eventually, seeming to give up attempting to conquer their new empire so close to the Middle Kingdom’s borders. They then moved south beyond the Tarim Basin and entered northern India. At the Shulu outriders’ last report, Chim’s forces had begun to invest the vassals of Guge, the Kingdom of the Tibetans, and were soon to march on their capital at Tsaparang. The Purgyal were certain of their defeat without Khitan aid, and called for immediate assistance per the terms of their alliance.

“What orders should I give to the Lord Daerqa?” the messenger inquired. He was a young man, maybe seventeen, yet despite his clear exhaustion he was alert and prepared to take to the saddle again, to ride straight back to Kashgar with all speed if need be.

“Stay here a few days and rest,” Agdji told him, clapping him on the shoulder. “Then ride to Kashgar with speed, but not enough to kill your horse. Tell the Miguniai and Shulu clans to mass their armies in Kashgar and hold it against this pretender, if he attempts to use the passes there. I will be along to deal with him as soon as matters here permit.”

The young man smiled, bowed, and turned to leave, but just as he was about to step out of Agdji’s yurt the Huangdi grimaced and called for him to wait. “Inform An to alert the Qin that one of their claimants has invaded our lands,” he told him, and not without great reluctance. The Qin Emperor would not be pleased.

The Emperor spent the next day preparing for a sacrifice to Tengri, in order to speed his coming conquests and allow him to return to Kashgar with haste. But all of his actions were sluggish and filled with lethargy, as if he was not truly driven to give praise to Father Sky. For many hours he ignored this, until he saw the messenger once again, resting at the edge of his encampment and speaking with Agdji the Younger.

It then struck him: he had not responded to the Purgyal request for aid. He had ignored them just as he had ignored the glaringly obvious threat that sat in Kashgar, guarded by but a few loyal men.

“I have tried to live up to my father's wishes," Agdji thought, "but is what I have done sparing myself a repeat of his mistakes, or ignoring the problem, the same as he did?"

The Huangdi walked slowly over to the messenger, both suddenly eager and hesitant, and when the boy saw his approach he practically sprung to his feet. Agdji rose more slowly, but bowed respectfully to his father.

“Son,” the Emperor addressed Agdji, “you know the crimes of your mother.”

“I do,” he answered immediately.

“I... I intend to order her heart sacrificed to Tengri,” he told him cautiously. “Do you find this unjust?”

The messenger’s eyes widened, but Agdji the Younger’s face remained calm. “I have no mother,” he replied after a short pause. “I have two fathers: Father Sky and my Lord Father, the Huangdi. What you see fit to do in the name of my God and Father is beyond my rebuke.”

The Emperor nodded his head slowly; the fear of his preferred heir's hatred was lifted from him. In control once more, he turned and nodded sharply to the messenger-boy. “You have now my orders--we will not ride to the aid of a family of traitors. Order that the priests should sacrifice the heart of Purgyal Kyi on behalf of my armies, that Father Sky might give us good weather and prowess in battle. Gulcicek is to be informed that she is now my wife, and I bestow upon her the privilege of being named Huangho. Now ride!”

The boy jumped as if struck and ran straight for his horse, jumping into the saddle and flying away as if shot from a great bow. But Agdji was glad to see his speed; it was good to see his shadow blend into the horizon, to know that he was finally free of the weight of Kyi.

Later rumors would claim that the half-starved madwoman Kyi would be taken from her yurt looking pale as a ghost, clawing and biting at her jailors just as she had when first imprisoned eight years before. They claim that she chanted in her foreign tongue in crazed whispers, beseeching demons to save her. They say she cried out at the last moment, as Gulcicek herself was the one who raised the knife, and, in her first act as Empress, carved out the heart of her predecessor. Which is true, if any, is not known; the Emperor never asked, and none who were present when Kyi was sacrificed ever recorded the events.

Kyi’s death signaled the true end of the first generation of Agdji’s women, for, though she had not been present in the lives of any Khitan since her abortive plot to murder Aerlu’on, she had technically still been married to Agdji until he ordered her death. With Gulcicek raised to Kyi’s old status as wife of the Emperor and a new camp girl--a Qipchaq, Karacik, which Agdji had been amused to find dabbled in strategy--raised as concubine, no remnant of the women who had given Agdji his girls, or his first three sons, remains.

Nor does any alliance with the Purgyal, for that matter. They are horrified to hear what the Emperor ordered done to Kyi, even despite her plotting. They completely renege on all treaties with the Khitans, not that it is expected that it will matter; by the estimation of Shulu Cha, Tibet will be conquered within a few months, and the Purgyal dynasty eradicated.

What preoccupies Agdji in the west is his control of the trans-Volga territory. There is precious little land under the Huangdi’s control there, and vast swathes of it, especially the Road of Silk, under the control of Kuman III Bekruti and the Seljuk Shah. With Baisha-an cutting an unimpressive image outside of his notable facility with underhanded tactics, simply giving the land over to his governance cannot guarantee security in the west. Thus, before Agdji might return east to deal with the pretender Chim, he must first consolidate the west.

This process begins with driving Kuman III across the Don river, allowing the Khitans, for the first time, to have direct access to the sea through the port at Tamatarkha. Although the Huangdi does not know it yet, his conquest will usher in the earliest period of meaningful interaction between the Khitans and Christendom.

As with most of Agdji’s wars in the far west, the campaign to oust Kuman is a rather simple one, consisting of little more than riding from Yegorlik to Tamatarkha. By the time the Huangdi arrives on the coast the Khan has already fled, his territory surrendered to the Emperor with scarcely a fight.

Later historians would often mark this as the moment when Yaerud royalty first initiated direct contact with a ruler of a Christian realm, citing probable contact between the Khitans and agents of the Byzantine Empress due to the proximity of Tamatarkha and Byzantine-controlled Bosporos, across the narrow strait. Indeed, as a royal territory Bosporos was overseen closely by the Empress, and court documents from Constantinople make it clear that the Empress was very interested in the forces of the Khitans, who had by now been well-known as agents of chaos and conquest across the steppe. It was, due to the inaccurate statements of several Byzantine historians, long reported that Agdji promised the Empress “eternal peace” in exchange for staying her wrath at his conquests.

In actuality, the Empress was weaker by far than the Caliph who feasted on her lands, and in no position to contact or combat Agdji--she could, at best, watch him warily. Agdji, for his part, did not view the lands he currently held as sufficiently secure to yet contemplate further western expansion, and, after gazing briefly on the western sea and fearing that it may extend northward, thereby isolating him in this land of eternal plains, turned his attention back to securing his territories in preparation of riding back east. There was no great meeting between the Khitans and Christianity that day.

Yet it does mark the point of inevitable contact. While the Khitans still sat comfortably east of the Volga and enslaved everyone within their territories who did not praise Tengri, they could miss Christendom’s indelible impact on the west. But now, literally reaching its shores, it was no longer possible to ignore.

Word soon reached the Khitan camp at Kashgar that the pretender-Emperor Tou Chim had, as predicted, crushed the Purgyal. Although some of the local Tibetan aristocracy were still landed at present, a great--but ill-fated--rebellion against the successful Emperor would soon be launched that would see the males of the dynasty stripped of their titles, and the women taken as concubines for the victorious lord. The Kingdom of Guge is no more.

Proclaiming the Chu empire once more by announcing a new Era Name (Longxing) in contest to the current Era of the Qin, Chim goes even further by making his intended Temple Name known far in advance of his death: Xianzu, though his men are made to call him Longxing. The extreme arrogance of propagating a would-be Temple Name in life is met with amusem*nt by the Khitan, however, who henceforth tend to refer to the man simply as Xianzu.

The matter is not viewed with such levity in the Middle Kingdom. Emperor Yangzong has only just beaten back a brutal civil war, and is still grasping at what seems a very distant recovery. The possibility that this would-be pretender might raid his realm--or worse, invade it and begin another long civil war--is intolerable. Yangzong therefore unsurprisingly thanks the Liao for the information that the Tou escaped, but orders them to exterminate his nascent state in the same breath.

Agdji is very, very tired of giving over to the orders of the Qin. But, for the moment, their interests and his own coincide, and Yaerud An was instructed long before to inform the Qin that the Liao would agree to their request. The Chu must be destroyed.

Although Agdji keeps abreast of information coming from the east, he is still separated from it by a period of almost a full year, and so knows nothing of the success of Chim’s invasion. The Huangdi is preoccupied with plans for the second invasion of Persia, after which he intends to finally ride for Kashgar and march on Chim, if he has conquered lands by the time of his return.

During this planning period, however, the first actual contact between a Christian lord and the Huangdi takes place. An emissary of Koz’ma Rurikovich of Kiev has arrived at the Khitan camp outside Sari-su.

Koz’ma had heard of Agdji’s ransacking of the countryside, and wished to spare his people the same fate, as well as to secure alliance against the Kuman Khanate, which controlled much of his territory and was rapidly pressing for his own subservience. Believing Agdji to be some great lord to which all the other Khans must bow (not an entirely unreasonable conclusion to make), Koz’ma believed an alliance with him would force the “other” Khans into line.

Although some of Agdji’s court know of Christianity, they are far away, in Kashgar; few of the riders of the host know much of it, save for a few ex-Muslim riders, and even they do not know it well. The most they can tell Agdji is that it is a faith somewhat like Islam, with one great God, but the Christians are heretics who worship two lesser Gods as well, including a minor prophet of their own faith. They are also said to practice sorcery and to transmute simple bread to human flesh.

Agdji’s first interaction with Christianity is therefore extremely negative. Viewing it as nothing but a heretical and cannibalistic offshoot of an already inferior faith, Koz’ma’s delegates are sent away without ever meeting the Huangdi, despite their repeated protests that Muslims are their enemies as well. Word will reach the Emperor of their claims, however, and over time the Christian antipathy to Islam would begin to interest Agdji.

As soon as the host had recuperated and the Sari-su (referred to as Idil by the Persians) was sufficiently raided to ensure a rapid conquest, Agdji leads his host forward into Sari-Su proper, to the seat of the governate, and, it is hoped, a rapid conclusion to the forthcoming conflict.

Shah Inal’s son, Inal the Younger, was given governance of Idil by his father some years before, but the territory is weak, poor, and virtually undefended. The Shah’s son and heir can likely be captured within the first days of the invasion, and, should this come to pass, Agdji hopes that he can force the Shah into a rapid peace. The territory is poor and virtually useless to the Persians anyway; why would the Shah not part with it in the name of his son’s safety?

As Agdji expected, when the Khitan host rode on Sari-su the small town the Shah had ordered constructed there was as ill-defended as he had left it when he ransacked it not a month before, and it fell within a matter of hours. Inside the settlement it was easy to pick out the prince from the two-hundred or so other residents, and so the Shah’s son fell into Khitan hands within the first days of the invasion.

Agdji sent a missive along with a fast rider to Persian lines, to inform the Shah of the capture of his son and demand the immediate Persian withdrawal from Sari-su, on threat of his son’s death. But the rider never returned, and after the second did not either, it was clear that the Shah did not take Agdji’s words seriously.

“As well he might,” Agdji admitted to his sons, the three eldest of which were now all with him on campaign. “The boy is more profitable to us alive than dead.”

“What is your intent, father? Do you wish to ransom him?” Aerlu’on asked.

“No,” Agdji replied, shaking his head slowly. “Remember well the lesson I taught Agdji those years ago,” he said, nodding to his second son. “We burn the settlements of the Persians to weaken them, even though we might gain more profit from simply forcing them to give up what we wish. Time presses us here, and so I thought to do just that; but if the Shah will not cooperate, we will take advantage of having the crown prince among us.”

He brought his sons with him when he gave the order, even Ago, despite his youth. Inal Seljuk was dragged to the center of a milling mass of Khitan riders, and Agdji, raising his hands, cried for him to be “scoured before the face of Tengri!”

The punishments were brutal, and lasted for days. The first day, he was beaten cruelly, and both of his legs broken; the second, the skin was flayed from his back; the third, sharp spikes were driven under his fingernails; the fourth, symbols of Tengri carved into his flesh with spearblades. Worst of all, he was left out every night in the freezing cold to almost die before being warmed up and fed, only to suffer the tortures of the following day. And each day, it seemed, the Khitans grew more inventive.

The decision was cruel, even by the standards of Agdji, whose long years as warlord on the steppes had greatly acclimated him to casual brutality. The Huangdi had been content in the past to consign entire populations to slavery and death, but he had rarely been willing to decree that an individual should face such a brutal reality, and a high noble at that. But they saw sense in what Agdji did: should the crown prince inherit his father’s lands, it would be wise if his mind was broken to fear the Khitans, and what they could do.

After over a week of the torture, which left Inal crazed, flinching at shadows, and on death’s door, Agdji simply let him go. He sent him in chains along with a rider to the Seljuk lines and turned back to campaigning.

“The Shah will take notice of me now,” Agdji told his sons. “He cannot ignore this.”

Surprisingly, Agdji’s brutality, if it had any effect on his children, did not seem to turn them into sad*stic monsters. They seemed to have both absorbed and accepted Agdji’s own world-view: that those who are not Khitan do not deserve the same protections as those who are. Becoming Khitan was possible (and not truly so difficult), but without riding and hunting among the people of the host, one’s life was worth less, and could be sacrificed at need on behalf of those who did. This explains how a man who was seen by almost everyone but his fellow Khitans as a crazed conqueror, pillager and dishonorable murderer could be viewed by his own people as, if not kind, then at least not cruel, but rather coldly rational and pragmatic.

This did tend to make Agdji’s sons prideful, or even arrogant; when Ago came of age to ride with the host he was already haughty, and even shy Aerlu’on viewed himself as above those who were not Khitan. Most arrogant of all was Agdji the Younger, whose unparalleled physical might, as well as strategic prowess, caused him to view himself as above even the other Khitans.

But, for all this, none of the sons had many other faults in them. Aerlu’on was quiet and reserved, but polite and hard-working. Agdji was temperate of diet as well as brave and honest, someone whom the host easily viewed as deserving of being called a great son of their people; and even young Ago, despite his somewhat snobbish behavior, was both kind and respectful to other Khitans, even though, of all the Yaerud, he was the already the greatest spearman of them at just twelve.

In some ways, though, Agdji presented issues. The Huangdi had not expected him to outperform his brother so thoroughly, and when he came of age the Emperor was at a loss. Eventually he acclaimed Agdji to the host and established him as the leader of the left flank, but he did not yet proclaim him successor. While they were on campaign, Aerlu’on would remain the formal heir.

Of course, the campaign did not last much longer. Even with the reported fury of Shah Inal towards the Emperor’s cruel treatment of his son, the Shah could not maintain the war against Agdji for long. The Caucasus mountains had slowed the Khitan host down for some time (especially Agdji, who seemed to view them as possibly being the mountains spoken of in Dashi’s prophesy), but not long enough. Four thousand Seljuk infantry were sent to reinforce the governor of Shirvan, Sultan Shahim, but by the time they arrived Shahim’s forces had already been defeated, and the Shah’s were in turn. With Sari-su fully occupied and the Khitan host swiftly approaching the Persian heartland and the capital absent its defensive garrison (which tended to cause a general panic among his court), Shah Inal was forced to beg a cessation to the conflict, and the Khitans duly rode back north across the Caucasus, now firmly in possession of Sari-su.

Of course, the Seljuks would never forget what Agdji had done to Inal’s son, nor forgive the Khitans the slight. The torture of an heir of Persia was dishonorable enough, but to torture the man for so long, and so cruelly, that he lost his mind to the suffering was unthinkable. Worse still, it raised a succession crisis in the midst of an ongoing civil war, making Shah Inal’s position even weaker relative to his newly-rebellious vassals. The Seljuk dynasty, to a one, swore vengeance on the Khitans for the dishonor.

Of course, to Agdji it was exactly the outcome he desired. Anything that would weaken Persia would strengthen his own people, and the hatred of Muslims who already despised him was hardly a matter worthy of consideration.

The defeat of the Seljuk Shah marks the beginning of the long return to Kashgar, which is sped along this year by favorable summer weather. The Huangdi arrives in the main camp before the winter truly sets in, in more than sufficient time to prepare for his campaign against the would-be Chu.

Agdji first hosts a strategy meeting, bringing along his governors Miguniai Aerlu’on and Shulu Cha II, as well as his three eldest sons. Aerlu’on and Cha discuss what little the Khitan know about the Chu armies--their strength, location, and effectiveness in combat--before concluding rather lamely that the army is between some 8,000 and 20,000 men strong, and “somewhere in Tibet.”

Agdji the Younger proves his own surprising work ethic in this same conference, however, using his ties to the Purgyal to bring in minor nobles of the family who had fled from the Kingdom of Guge. They reveal the nature of the enemy in much greater detail: the army is approximately 15,000 men strong, focusing heavily on archers and light infantry, with a poor cavalry and heavy infantry corps; vulnerable, in other words, to Khitan skirmish tactics. Moreover, they know that the Chu Emperor insisted that the army defend him personally in Tsaparang, and that it will therefore be close to the Khitan border.

The Huangdi approves of Agdji the Younger’s diligence, even if not necessarily the Purgyal he used to acquire his information. At the same strategy meeting he announced to his assembled governors and children his decision: Aerlu’on would no longer be maintained as heir, and instead Agdji would succeed him.

Such a proclamation could easily cause strife within most families, but Aerlu’on took the decision with grace, and even some degree of relief--it’s quite possible, shy as he was, that he had never wished to lead the Khitan himself at all. Ambitious Agdji was always the better choice to sit at the top.

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The proclamation of Agdji the Younger as he who would become Agdji II led to many changes in his behavior. He had always carried himself as above other Khitan, but as the heir-elect he was now even more confident in himself, and, in further strategy meetings with Sugr Daerqa, was even willing to debate strategy at length with him. Sugr proved more familiar with the territory of the Tarim Basin than Agdji was, but the young man still made many salient points, which surprised Sugr given the lad’s age. Although the two lacked the close relationship which the Huangdi and Sugr shared, Sugr’s willingness to support Agdji was a clear sign of the strength of his relationship with the Huangdi.

The prince’s behavior was not all good, of course; no child’s ever is at the age of sixteen. He chased the skirts of one of the Miguniai’s concubines, which forced the Huangdi to become involved and to scold him severely. But, in the main, Agdji the Younger’s behavior towards the rest of the court was polite if slightly aloof, and his clear skill and dedication proved that the Emperor had not made the wrong decision when electing to support him as his principal heir. By the time the host rode south to reach Guge the prince had grown significantly, from a skilled but undisciplined young man into a truly exceptional military commander, ready to command his father’s left flank in the invasion.

Of course, the Huangdi’s plan was somewhat more unique than what he had initially let on.

The first part of the campaign, which all of the assembled commanders had agreed upon, was the necessary invasion of the lands of Raja Atar Kyrre, the Raj of Kashmir.

For a long while the Lohara dynasty had served as the unwilling buffer-state between the Khitans and their allies, the Purgyal, in Guge. Although formally a tributary state of the Purgyal, the Tibetans had refused to lift a finger to save the Lohara Rajas from constant invasions on the behalf of the Shulu governate, which had left their territory and armies devastated. Hating both the Khitans and the Purgyal the Loharas had long hoped to gain independence and strike further south into the Hind in order to save themselves from the “mad raiders” from the north, but their weakness compared to the Purgyal had long forced them to stay in their tributary relationship, isolated in the north and, in large part, funding the Purgyal dynasty.

When the Purgyal finally collapsed during the Chu invasion, the Lohara believed that it was finally their time to strike out. But even as the first pro-Purgyal civil war raged in what was once Guge, the Chu Emperor engaged in an expansionist war against the Lohara which forced them back into their tribute, now to fund his own rule. And so the unhappy Rajas still serve the master of Tsaparang, and still stand firmly in the way of the Khitan advance to its gates.

Simple necessity required that the Khitan break their hold on Kashmir, so that they might reach Tsaparang. But, beyond that, Shulu Cha II had long been agitating for an expansion of his lands, and the grant of Kashmir was viewed by the Huangdi as a necessary pacification for his friend, whom he hunted with often (or, at least, whenever he could--the time Agdji spent in Kashgar grew less and less by the year).

The campaign was a simple one, but Agdji was strangely quiet during the two weeks it took to oust the Lohara from Kashmir. Agdji the Younger knew that his father was planning something.

“I do not intend to destroy the Chu,” the Emperor admitted. He told this to his sons while encamped at Sardu, on the border of Guge, the night before they had intended to ride for Tsaparang.

His children were struck dumb, until Agdji the Younger gathered his wits enough to cry out, “What do you mean? The whole campaign has been planned to destroy them!”

The elder Agdji held up a hand for silence, and his son and heir reluctantly complied. “Rather, I do not intend to kill his family to the last, or to restore the Purgyal. Though I intend to make this Xianzu wear his Temple Name in truth, I will permit the Tou dynasty to continue to rule in Tibet, so long as his sons will bow to me and efface themselves before the Liao.”

“This is what you were preoccupied with?” Aerlu’on correctly surmised.

The Huangdi nodded. “The Qin Emperor gave orders--orders!--that the Chu dynasty should be destroyed and Xianzu killed. Insofar as our interests are concerned, in this we are aligned with them. But the implication of the Qin’s missive was clearly that the Chu should be destroyed to the last, their very existence snuffed out, not merely that they should be forced to revoke their imperial style. I do not intend to bow and scrape to the intent of their message: I will follow it to the letter, and that only.”

Agdji the Younger was the first to catch on fully. “You wish to make Xianzu bow before he dies,” he said.

His father smiled--a cruel, predatory smile. “It has been too long since a Han man bowed to a Khitan. This would-be Emperor did not even know that we were here; the Qin have clearly dishonored us, and hidden our existence. I have not forgiven our claims, our name, or our honor. How better to strengthen the Liao than to force a dragon to bow?”

The campaign began the following morning, with 10,000 Khitan cavalry charging across the Chu border into Lie province. Few Han men were in evidence, though it was clear that the Chu Emperor had brought at least twenty or thirty-thousand with him. It appears that they were informed of the Khitan advance by the Lohara, and the Emperor elected to withdraw all of his loyal men to Tsaparang, to better defend himself. It was not yet clear if the Chu had heard of the claims of the Liao or simply believed that they were being invaded by opportunistic nomads, but they were, at least, being taken seriously. A general muster was underway, and it appeared that the main army in Tsaparang would soon be reinforced by up to two-thousand local Tibetans.

The plan which had been established for the invasion called for the occupation of Lie, which would lead into a push into the northeastern province of Ritu. But Khitan scouts soon discovered that their Purgyal informants misjudged the facility of Khitan horses on the mountain paths, and that there was no feasible route to reach Ritu. Tsaparang, along with its forbidding mountain terrain and fortifications, was the only way further into Guge.

The host now had two choices: they could invest Lie, which might eventually force the Chu Emperor to march down and attempt to force them out; or they could strike at Tsaparang immediately, attempting to defeat the Emperor’s army before reinforcements arrived, possibly capturing his family in the process.

“How should we proceed?” Agdji asked his father.

“If you were alive when I was young,” the Huangdi replied, “you would know the answer already! I spoke it to Ituk when I was but twenty, not much older than you are now. When enemy forces held the Kashgar pass against us, Ituk wished to retreat. But I said then as I say now: cowards do not know how to respond to true bravery! We will ride to Tsaparang, and mountain or not, we will conquer those who hold it against us!”

Agdji’s sons had heard of the three Battles of Kashgar, of course. They were the three most legendary battles the Khitans had ever fought west of Mongolia, and the foundation of their father’s legend. Horribly outmanned and in terrible terrain, the Huangdi had thrice secured impossible victory against armies which should have crushed the Khitan host to dust.

But none of them had been alive for a single one of them, save Aerlu’on, who was an infant that fled Kashgar along with his mother, Vimala, before the final of the three battles. None had never experienced their like firsthand; they saw petty battles like the Battle of Suvar and called their father a legend, because he had beaten a smaller host with so few losses.

If Suvar was the beginning of their worship of their father, Tsaparang was when it was finally struck home.

Mountains surrounded them. A river was before them which they would be forced to ford, and the enemy archers, thousands of them, were perched in the hills at their flanks, ready to rain death upon them should they even attempt to charge. Even Agdji the Younger, despite his own not-insignificant strategic skill, begged his father to retreat.

But Agdji was the Destroyer. He feigned a retreat and sent a quarter of his host, under Agdji the Younger, behind the enemy through the treacherous passes, leading their horses on foot, single-file. Two days later the Huangdi returned and launched a feigned attack against the enemy line, which they bit on. Rushing to the river’s edge, the enemy infantry made to hold it against the Khitan advance. But the Khitan cavalry wheeled at the last moment, raining arrows on the Han army, even as the thunder of hooves was heard BEHIND them. Thousands of heavy cavalry had materialized behind their lines, smashing into the advanced infantry and driving them into the same river they had hoped to hold against the Khitans. Thousands drowned.

The archers which had been intended to screen the Han army soon found themselves without an army to defend, as the last remaining forces of the Chu Emperor--his cavalry--were soon hunted down and wiped out by the Khitan horse archers, who moved faster by far than the sluggish horses the Han has brought with them from China. In a blind panic the last stragglers attempted to reach the mountain fortress of Tsaparang, but they were mowed down in detail by the Khitan heavy cavalry, whose barding shielded them from the panicked arrows of the archers which they pursued.

It was not a rout; it was a slaughter. Not one of the Han soldiers who had followed their general-turned-Emperor into exile remained to defend him by the end of the 25th. The Khitan had paid for their first feint dearly, losing nearly six hundred men, but it was a pittance compared to the fifteen thousand Han killed, and only a hundred Khitans had died following Agdji the Younger’s surprise charge from the rear. This was the spirit of Kashgar, felt again for the first time in twenty years: the wholesale destruction of a numerically superior enemy in ill-suited terrain, while suffering minimal losses.

The response from the host was indescribable. Only a handful of the riders currently at Agdji’s side had been present at one of the Battles of Kashgar, and so they, like Agdji’s own sons, had failed to truly understand. After Tsaparang, they came to know him as he truly was.

Cries rose up from the base of the mountains, and the Chu Emperor cowered back in fear. They chanted in unison, shaking the mountains around them with their thunderous echo: “AGD-JI, HUANG-DI! AGD-JI, HUANG-DI! AGD-JI! HUANG-DI!”

The terror felt by the Xianzu “Emperor” was clear, for despite repeated demands that he open his gates or feel the wrath of the true Huangdi, he remained shut firmly within Tsaparang. It was not clear to Agdji whether Xianzu now knew who he was or simply believed that the "barbarians" knew enough of the Middle Kingdom to understand who HE was, and to claim his title. Whichever possibility was true, it appears to have terrified the pretender. He attempted to slip riders through the Khitan lines to order a general muster and counter-attack several times, but Aerlu’on, in charge of the perimeter, believed that all the messengers were caught; there would be no reinforcements.

Indeed, even had the messengers gotten through it is unlikely that Xianzu would have received any aid, for the countryside was in more-or-less open rebellion against his rule, now that he no longer possessed an army to pacify them. After several weeks of no support from the outside, Tibetan guards wrested control of the gates from their Han overseers and allowed Agdji and his host to ride into the palace unopposed.

The guards opened the doors for him at every step of the way, and so it was that Agdji was able to enter the palace through the front gate. Therein, bedecked in his oriental armor and wielding the Spear of the Destroyer, its tassels flowing in the breeze of the entryway, Agdji confronted Xianzu, the would-be Emperor.

Aerlu’on and Agdji the Younger flanked their father, and guards from his host were posted outside the room; there was no escape for the Chu Emperor. “You are he who, in his arrogance, named himself Xianzu?” Agdji asked fluently in the speech of the Middle Kingdom, stepping into the palace.

Xianzu was clearly taken aback by the fluency of the ‘barbarian,’ but swiftly drew himself up. “I am Longxing, era--”

“The era,” Agdji overrode him, still striding forward, “is Xuxing. I am its steward, the Lord Liao, son of the Dezong Emperor, Tianyou Wulie, Yaerud Dashi. You will honor me as Huangdi.”

“The Liao!” Xianzu scoffed. “The Liao died out before the Qin dynasty took the throne!”

Agdji craned his head behind him, and in a bellowing cry called out, “Are you dead, men?”

It was only then that Xianzu fully understood his situation, for the thunderous chorus of ten thousand voices screaming “WE ARE NOT DEAD! WE ARE NOT DEAD!” shook the entire city, and left Xianzu pale.

Agdji finally drew himself up next to the Emperor, and, speaking quietly, demanded: “you will kowtow before me as Huangdi and acknowledge the Liao as your masters, or everyone you know will die.”

Xianzu was both kind and--for his station at least--humble. Agdji’s words struck fear into his heart, as he looked at the crouching form of his sons, hiding behind his throne on the opposite side of the room. He could not cause them to die.

Tou Chim, the so-called Chu Emperor, kowtowed.

“The dragon bows!” Agdji the Younger cried out, and it was taken up and carried on the wind by the thousands of Khitan outside: “The dragon bows to Agdji Huangdi!”

Agdji then surprised his sons by reaching down and touching the forehead of Xianzu with three fingers from his hand--acknowledging his submission.

“Your sons will live,” the Emperor told the disgraced man, “and will rule. But you wore a Temple Name. There is only one way to earn such a title.”

Xianzu’s head shot up, but even as he opened his mouth to speak, Agdji’s spear shot down, pinning the once-Emperor to the ground.

His children screamed.

Agdji fulfilled his promise to the Yangzong Emperor in the Middle Kingdom: Xianzu was slain, and his empire crumbled. But he fulfilled his promise to Xianzu as well, recognizing his submission and leaving his sons alive, and in charge of Tibet, merely under Khitan control.

As was the wont of children, they did not understand Agdji’s mercy. Xianzu’s oldest, Ts’ao, pulled away from his mother and screamed at the Huangdi, “I will kill you for this, I swear! I swear it, I swear it, you will DIE!”

“We all die, child," Agdji replied softly. "When you are older, you may try to be the cause of my end, if you wish. Fifteen thousands of your father’s own men have just tried and perished. What hope do you have of bringing my time to its close, little one?”

Nevertheless, Agdji left them in peace. After securing the promise of the Queen-Regent that she would rule in the name of the Xuxing Emperor--that is, Agdji--the Khitan host departed and returned to Kashgar. And, for the Huangdi, legend.

When Agdji was but a babe, after the death of his twin sister Tugusir, Dashi had prophesied that, should he be the proper son to follow him, he would shake the mountains with the thunder of his deeds. Even the superstitious among the Khitan had thought his words merely poetic, but that was before the Battle of Tsaparang. The riders who had survived Agdji’s great victory there had heard the mountains themselves shake with their maddened cries praising Agdji Huangdi, proving Dashi’s words true.

The other nomads of the steppe hated Agdji, but they had always viewed his house as being of almost divine blood, the descendants of the Celestial Khans. But the Khitan, though they respected the Yaerud clan, had not previously viewed it as special--it was as the Interlocutors of Heaven that the Yaerud were blessed, and that glory was lost even before Dashi, lost with Tianzuo Last-Emperor; what right they had to rule in the west they maintained only as a result of Dashi himself: he saved the Khitan from certain death, and their sons followed his sons in repayment. But here, now, they came to realize that they had been wrong after all. Heaven had not abandoned the Yaerud, but had instead sought out the best of them. Dashi’s blood was blessed with foresight and martial prowess unmatched in lesser men, and Agdji was the perfect distillation of Heaven's greatest blessing.

For most of Agdji’s life, his ambition had been kept in check, despite his growing legend, due to the commandments given to him by Dashi. Until he set his feet upon the western plains of what was to be the home of the Khitan, he could not allow himself to feel worthy of his father.

With the subjugation of the Chu, this began to change. Thirty years of hard riding and almost constant warfare had kept Agdji preoccupied, but the sight of a Han man kowtowing before him--a pretender to the throne, no less!--had awoken something within. He had fought so single-mindedly that the horizon which had pulled him ever onward had nearly clouded his reasons for riding towards it. Worse, it had almost caused him to forget who HE was: the Lord Liao, rightful ruler of the Middle Kingdom. For thirty years he had lived a barbaric existence as a nomad, but Huangdi was not merely a title, it was a statement of intent, and a memory of glory lost. As his pride reignited, he castigated himself: he had lived as a warlord for too long, and not a ruler.

Agdji spent weeks upon his return to Kashgar riding across Tarim with his sons, ostensibly to induct them into the Berkutchi as he had been when he first converted to Tengrism. And train they did, of course, for many hours of the day. But more important was Agdji's long discussion of their heritage, and their duty.

“We march west,” Agdji told his sons, “on the command of your grandfather. You all know of his prophesy. But I doubt you truly understand why we must leave this desolate steppe rather than fight back east, nor why our return is also foretold. I have been lax as Huangdi; you should have all been told stories of our true home from your childhood, as I was. But I will do my best to make amends now.”

“I traveled to the Middle Kingdom upon a time,” Agdji told his sons. “When I was a young man, I went to meet the Emperor Shizu, the founder of the Qin dynasty, he who overthrew the Jin, who overthrew our House in turn.

“I spent the many years it took to reach Kaifeng and return partly to determine the strength of the Empire, and to judge if we might stand against them. Their splendor was magnificent, and I determined that we could not, which led to my kowtow before the Qin Emperor.

“I am not ashamed of what I did; it was necessary for our survival. But even if I had no intent to bow I would have traveled there, for I wanted to see what we once were, and what we lacked. I spent my whole life, as you have, as a nomad. I did not know what living as a settled people was like.

“It was in the Middle Kingdom that I came to understand the wisdom of my father. I saw wonders unspeakable; everywhere there were books and writing. Gold flowed like water between the hands of craftsmen and merchants, and there were so many peoples that, if we gathered up the whole of our people from every governate, we would not fill but a single city of that great realm.”

Finally he turned to his children, who rode quietly behind him. “I cannot adequately explain what it is that I saw,” he admitted. “Words fail me, and time has dulled my memory. But I can tell you this: it was greater than anything else I have ever witnessed, and it stretched on past all horizons. To rule such a realm, we must be what we never before were: a changed people, settled and civilized. That is why we ride west, to find the realms beyond the steppe where settled life reigns. There, we can become what we must.”

“I cannot explain it,” he repeated, sadly. “But there is one who might. The Qin owe us a debt, and I have now called for its repayment.”

Chapter 6: The Bringer of Change, Pt. V - In Search of the Mountain

Chapter Text

Ts’ao Huei’s arrival in Kashgar was unprecedented. The largest group that had ever arrived from the Qin was sent merely to escort her; one-thousand Han soldiers in the finest gear were sent not as her escort (that was five thousands!) but to stay with and protect her for the duration of her days. She was carried from the Middle Kingdom on the backs of slaves in a gold-lined palanquin, and with her she brought the seal of her father, Yangzong, wishing “everlasting good fortune” to the Liao dynasty, and thanking them profusely for their efforts.

Many things could be said of the Qin, not least that they were overbearing, but they recognized a deed worthy of repayment. Huei was a brilliant administrator and diplomat, as well as being regarded as a transcendent beauty, at least in the Han tradition; she was easily the greatest of Yangzong’s daughters not yet betrothed. It transcended a Kingly gift; it was, indeed, a gift worthy of a fellow Emperor.

Agdji, Agdji the Younger and Aerlu’on all stood before the great procession as it drew to the edge of the Kashgar camp to receive the princess, with young Ago standing somewhat nervously behind his father. Agdji the Younger was himself nervous, stepping from foot to food uneasily.

“I did not expect that a daughter of the Qin Emperor would be your solution,” Agdji the Younger admitted. As the thousands of Han troops approached them in lock-step, it was difficult for him to not turn and flee--half over fear of this marriage, half over the distinct feeling he was being marched upon.

“No,” Agdji agreed with a smile. “But it is wise. She has lived her entire life in the Middle Kingdom; she knows it better than I do, and possibly even better than father did. She will serve you well.”

When Huei finally stepped forth from her palanquin, she did not seem disgusted with the environs of the encampment, or with her husband. She did him due obeisance as a prince of a coequal empire, and proved both witty and immediately willing to learn the Khitan tongue. Despite his reservations, Agdji the Younger soon found that he liked his new wife.

Aerlu’on had laughed good-naturedly at his brother on his wedding night as he fumbled over his words and struggled to not make a fool of himself in front of his new wife. Her honor guard formed their own camp off to the edge of the Kashgar encampment, and were never far; Agdji the Younger spent their first days together half terrified of insulting her sufficiently that he might warrant her fetching them against him, and half struggling not to appear unmanned in front of her. He’d had women before, of course, but never a princess of her stature!

It was soon Aerlu’on’s turn to trip over his words, though, as Agdji was unmerciful in seeing his children matched. In return for Aerlu’on’s ribbing, Agdji’s first son found himself informed that he would be married but five days later, and indeed on the same day--the same afternoon, even!--that it was to occur.

The match was not an unusual one in the end, pairing Aerlu’on and Sugr Daerqa’s daughter, Tura. While Tura was not a particularly beautiful or physically impressive girl, she was of Ituk’s blood, and the Daerqa were held in the highest regard by the Yaerud clan, standing only behind the Qin in order of prominence. Just as Sugr held the hand of Arel, it was expected that one of Agdji’s sons would take one of Sugr’s daughters, in order to ensure their alliance was eternal.

So it was that Aerlu’on found himself sputtering and scowling at his father even as he was dragged under the Great Sky to be joined together with his new wife Tura, while Agdji the Younger looked on and laughed. Even Huei chuckled behind her hand, which went a long way to ingratiating her with her new husband.

The host rode off back west the same day that Aerlu’on was wed, confident that the Chu (now referred to once again simply by their family name of Tou) were pacified for the time being.

Few Khitans had settled in the great fields between the Volga and Don rivers to which the host was riding, but those few Khitans that roamed the plains around Tamatarkha had been in long contact with the Christians nearby, and had learned in detail about some of the lands beyond their sight. Word which had reached Yaerud An, which had then been relayed to Agdji during his stay in Kashgar, claimed that there were great settled kingdoms not much further to their west, across the great Dneipr and Danube rivers. The lands were said to be rich, the people plentiful, and the governments based on law. It seemed more than a paradise; it seemed deliverance. Although the court had long known of rumors of a great empire of people to the west, they had never been certain whether it was due west or west-and-south, in lands claimed by the Muslims; now there was clear proof that Agdji had predicted correctly, and a true civilization existed separate to the Muslims, across the steppe.

But too little was known of it. Names, places, beliefs… these were barely guessed at, and often contradicted. If the Khitans were to settle in these lands, they must know, with certainty, of the people and traditions that went before them, and, if the worst should pass, whether these people would be hostile to their rule.

Agdji could have simply asked for diplomats, or priests. An even recommended that he do so. But the steppe had been in him for too long; he had himself never been taught the rule of law. The Huangdi elected instead to seize a man by force from the service to the Empress of a land called Rhomaion. And so the host marched into Bosporos by force and burned much of it to the ground, capturing the priest Phokas and beginning Agdji’s interaction with Christendom.

It was soon discovered that Phokas was not at all like what most of his people would regard as an ideal priest. Somehow dull, ugly and frail all at once, he seemed to mistake his own weakness, and was prone to outbursts of violent paranoia, and often had to be confined. Agdji eventually worked it out of him that he had been a political appointment made by the previous Emperor of his realm--of this, at least, Agdji had some understanding.

Still, Phokas was well-versed in his people’s faith and was extremely literate; in return for educating him about the lands of the west, the Huangdi agreed to purchase him any books he might desire, and to allow him to live among the host. Of course, “allow” was but a polite fiction; Phokas did not have any choice in the matter. He would spend his next several years frequently at the Emperor’s side, teaching him everything he knew of his lands.

But this did not mean that the Huangdi’s campaigns ceased, either. The territory around Tamatarkha was seen as extremely important due to its sheltered harbors and easy access to what was seen as the arch-Christian realm of Romaion, and both Agdji and Agdji the Younger agreed that securing it against threat was of paramount importance. The most obvious threat to the territory came from the so-called Shah of Sakartvelo, one Sadri, who had began as a petty Muslim count and invaded the Kingdom, then launched several expansions across the mountains which had brought him great prestige--at least as a mountain-King. In truth his realm was quite pathetic, however, and the Khitan host had occupied and burned all of his holdings north of the mountains in but a single summer.

This campaign was destined to be followed-up by a much more challenging one, however: against Blush Ulashogli, Khan of the Kumans, who was regarded by Phokas as a terrifying warrior of incredible prowess, the most legendary Khan of the western steppe, who had forged a vast empire and dominated the Kievan Rus. As Kiev was Christian, Phokas believed that the pagan warrior’s might was all the stronger, and all the more terrifying. But Agdji was not so swayed.

“You have seen the wars of the west,” he spoke, as one of the Khitans who had been living among the Greeks translated for him. “You have seen little of ours. You saw just now the ruin we wrought upon the Muslim lord who ruled these mountains. We will have little trouble here.”

“The Muslims are weak,” came Phokas’s reply, “heretics who deny God’s grace and persist in their ignorance by choice. Their defeat is holy and ordained, and it is little surprise you conquered them. The Rurikovich are a Christian dynasty; to have been defeated, either they must have been morally weak and impious, or the Khan must be a warrior without parallel, his will such that he might, for a time, escape the wrath of God which shall come upon him in the end of his days.”

Agdji thought on this for a time before replying, “Your God’s wrath will not wait until the end of this man’s days. I will defeat him, and though not in his name you might call me the instrument of your God’s wrath, if it is your desire.”

The campaign was more difficult than Agdji's boastful promises had insisted. Part of this came from the news that his sister (and effectively his mother-figure) Ordelhan had died while serving as a priest of Tengri in Emil. Agdji had not spoken to Ordelhan since he had exiled her following her scheming to murder Aerlu’on, but her death weighed on him all the more for their lack of reconciliation, and the Huangdi was withdrawn for much of the campaign, both distant and distracted. What was meant to be a campaign of a few months quickly turned into a war of seasons, as Agdji was outmaneuvered and flanked by fast riders under Blush, who forced the Khitans to respond to multiple hosts and constant raids against their herds in the Don-Volga basin. Khitan raids into Kuman lands across the Dnieper were countered by Kuman raids across the Don, which turned into a seemingly never-ending cat-and-mouse game, with the Khitans proving unable to pin down and eliminate the host under Blush.

Eventually, after a year of hard fighting, Agdji was able to defeat the last Kuman host. Victory secured the mouth of the Don river, as well as Tamatarkha, but left Agdji feeling uncertain. Never before had he encountered a rider who could challenge him, and though he had defeated Blush, he was hesitantly forced to admit that Blush had outmaneuvered him many times; was he truly as skilled as his men claimed? Or was it that Ordelhan’s death had weakened his mind?

“Your sister’s death distracts you,” Phokas acknowledged upon an evening. “You think it makes you weak? It does not. You grieve, as any civilized man would. You might see her again; her soul can be saved, if only you turn to Jesus Christ.”

“Do not try to convert me, priest,” the Huangdi spat.

“Very well,” Phokas replied softly. “But has your God ever raised the dead? Mine has. He is powerful. Powerful enough to reunite you and yours in bliss. Even your father.”

Agdji glared daggers at the priest. But even then, he slowly bade him speak.

Phokas’s words were honeyed. His God, whom he revealed that the Muslims had in fact copied and bastardized, was the original God of a much more ancient people, powerful beyond imagining--indeed, capable of doing anything He wished. He was, Phokas claimed, the only God; there was no Tengri, nor Allah, but only his God. And his God’s power and benevolence was such that, merely by bowing to Him, it would be possible to restore his beloved ones to life. Phokas admitted that his God did not actually exercise this power, which left Agdji skeptical, but he did claim this: that there was proof He had in the past, and that their great holy book, which revealed the truths of past events, made it clear that any man who worshipped God could save his family by beseeching him on their behalf. It was a tempting prospect, especially as Agdji was certain that Great Tengri would not allow him to see his father in the afterlife, as his father had not given praise to Father Sky. But Agdji had chosen to follow Tengri of his own will and brought his people along with them; he could not abandon him so easily.

Yet... it was tempting. Shortly after the war against the Kumans completed and the Khitan host began campaigns north of the Don, word reached the host that Asli Kuchet had been murdered. Though she was retired as a concubine, she had spurned the advances of one of Agdji’s generals, Kail, and he had grown to despise her for the slight. One night he had killed her himself with his blade, and then attempted to flee the camp before being captured.

Mother of Paudun and the woman who had helped bring the Khitan to Tengri, she was precious to Agdji, and in his rage he ordered Kail trampled to death by ten thousand horses. But his death did not bring Asli back, and it was not difficult for Phokas to spin her death as the work of his God, and his powerful magic.

“She brought your people to a pagan faith,” Phokas said, “yet even she can be saved. My God’s will struck her down as a heretic, but should she be prayed for, even she can be saved.”

“You are a fool if you think I will now abandon the last legacy of her on this Earth,” Agdji spat. But his heart betrayed indecision, and he began to think on the nature of Tengri.

Even though he was unwilling to abandon Tengri, in his grief Agdji was more easily swayed in other matters. As Phokas taught him more about the realms of the west and their ways, from the land of the Magyars and Poles to the Empire of the Germans and the Rus, he put gradually increasing pressure on the Huangdi to strike against his fellow Tengrists to the northeast, to relieve pressure on the Russians.

There was no reason to strike so far north across the Don--not, at least, if the Khitans were to remain fixed on their goal of striking west. But security was a factor, as well as the continued loyalty and strength of the vassal governates, and the Turburur were clamoring for more land across the Don themselves, so that they might launch raids without needing to ford the great river under threat. Agdji thus found himself persuaded to agree on behalf of the Turburur, leading Phokas to believe that he had gained a much more firm grip of the Huangdi’s mind than he truly had.

It was difficult for Agdji to vent his frustrations in war, as it often seemed trivial to him. He faced weak enemies with few men and barely any understanding of strategy, and so it was little surprise when he defeated them. Even in single combat, the Huangdi’s prowess and gear was more than sufficient to overcome any of those who stood against him.

It was different on this campaign. Agdji was so frustrated between Phokas’s poisoned words and the death of his sister and most honored concubine that he could not escape intrusive thoughts of regret and sorrow. His sons were of no help to him in overcoming his grief, and war could not distract him. Eventually, while overseeing the clearing of drainage ditches for one of the host’s temporary camps, the Huangdi set upon the idea of trying to exhaust himself through labor, so that he might finally have peaceful sleep free of his thoughts.

Though his men were stunned by his decision to work alongside them, and even resisted it, the Emperor would not accept their refusals. He spent much of the next campaigns working himself ragged every day, alongside the lowest Khitans of the camps. The common riders were as aghast as they were impressed; it was soon said that the Huangdi had the physique of a man fifteen years his junior, still in his prime.

As Atrak Pechene was easily defeated, however, soon even this small comfort was removed from Agdji. Few enemies remained in the region which held more worth to conquer than to raid, and in the bitter cold of deepest winter few of Agdji’s riders were interested in entertaining thoughts of riding further north, least of all the Huangdi’s sons. Even fewer would have been willing to raise herds there, in lands only suitable for grazing for some four or five months of the year, and possibly barren or nigh-impassible the rest.

The Emperor did order the campaign extended to Jov, which the Khitans called Muqshi, but this was little more than an attempt to please the Turburur. The campaign was destined to be over in less than a month, and the Huangdi back in his saddle, weighed down by regrets and intrusive thoughts of age.

The conquest of Jov did have the unintended consequence of forcing close proximity between the Khitans and the Muinaisusko pagans of the north for the first time, however. Long having had contact with the Khitans and serving as scouts, petty tradesmen and advisers to the herds who roamed south of their lands, the Muinaisusko and the Tengri Khitans had long held respect for one another, recognizing and respecting their shared worship of nature through shamanic ritual. Although the Khitans under Agdji have, in their minds, respected this in turn by neglecting to slaughter the Muinaisusko wholesale and instead simply demanding that their adult men ride with the host as Khitan warriors, the “emptying of Jov” leads to a break with the northern pagans elsewhere, and serves as an important, if often overlooked, step towards isolating the Khitans from other pagan faiths.

On their ride south from Muqshi, Agdji’s third son Ago finally comes of age and is welcomed into the host in full. The coming-of-age of a martial prince of the blood is a time of great festivity for the riders, and among all the drinking and martial contests, the melancholy Agdji finally finds himself somewhat lifted from his ill spirits. Despite the pains of life, the world goes on, and as the old die, the young take their place.

As Agdji’s first gift for the celebration, Ago is granted the title of Ishad, the only rank capable of commanding a wing of the great Khitan host independent of the orders of the Huangdi. It is an honor shared only by his two brothers, Aerlu’on and Agdji the Younger, and marks Ago as an honored warrior of the Khitans.

The grant is neither trivial nor placatory, however; Agdji has made it specifically because Ago had proven himself. Ago has taken naturally to war and battle in a way which neither Agdji the Younger nor Aerlu’on did, and both of his elder brothers have dedicated much of their adult lives to learning the skills which came to Ago alone naturally. Although other parts of the Ago’s life have suffered--the prince can neither read nor write, and knows little of managing a realm beyond shattering it and carrying off its women and horses--none of these things were ever asked of him. Ago was asked to be a warrior, and as his father names him Ishad before the host and they proclaim him their commander, the young man can smile with true happiness--he has not failed to honor his father.

Rumors of raids on the western edge of the Caspain cause the Huangdi to divert back east shortly after Ago's coming-of-age. The disturbances reveal themselves to be orchestrated by the last two petty Khans to rule in the region: Sharukan Otrak of Buzachi and Sircan Zaporzhye of Mangyshlak. Both of them were strong riders under the Pecheneg Khanate of the Burcalids, which once stretched around the Caspian, and now, after Agdji, exists only as a remnant of its past power in the cold north. After Agdji shattered the power of the Burcalids Sharukan and Sircan saw their opportunity and broke from the Khanate, but now hemmed in by the Khitans to the north and the Seljuks to the south, and unable to defeat one another, both Khans have taken to raiding the Khitans in a petty effort to gain more territory and carve out a true realm for themselves.

Sharukan and Sircan are petty annoyances to the Khitans at best, but nevertheless Agdji sees the capture of their territory as being a worthwhile pursuit given the lull in the west brought on by the Turburur's consolidation of their new lands. Not only will the new lands alleviate pressure from the Miguniai for the expansion of their own territory, it will also prevent the Seljuks from launching campaigns to the north and pressing further into the steppe, which is an ongoing concern for the Khitans.

While Agdji and his sons are on campaign in the Caspian, Europe is going through another tumultuous period of further Crusader zeal. The recent victory of the Third Crusade in retaking Jerusalem, despite the limited success of the expedition, has convinced Pope Alexander III to authorize the creation of the so-called Teutonic Order, a group made up principally of German mercenaries, peasants and lesser noble sons and headed by upper Christian nobility from throughout Europe, often those pushed out of their home countries by the conquest of their titles or through political strife.

This new holy order has principally been organized to assist the Poles, whose territory has been collapsing ever since the extinction of the Piast dynasty in 1182 with the death of Boleslaw IV. Since Boleslaw’s death the realm has been ruled by a string of unworthy rulers, and Prussian tribals have managed to occupy over half of Poland’s territory. The current Polish King, Wlodzimierz Gryfita, is only the first King of his dynasty, and the first to call himself Polish, his father being descended from the old Kings of the Wends, whom Boleslaw IV himself had conquered early in his reign! The pagan past of the Gryfita dynasty is not forgotten, and the Poles themselves tend to view Wlodzimierz as a cruel and opportunistic ruler who seized the throne from his predecessor through subterfuge; not an individual likely to gain the confidence of his many vassals.

Thus, though the Teutonic Hochmeister, Carles, has been given instruction to march against the Prussians in order to give the weak Wlodzimierz a reprieve lest Poland fall to paganism, he has also been given secret orders. The Pope quietly insists that the Order not be too quick to return any land it might acquire to the Gryfita, as Alexander III believes they are unproven in their conversion to Catholicism.

Though to the Khitan this most recent campaign of conquest and liquidation is seen as nothing less than normal after decades of Agdji's brutal and rapid expansionism, for the Lady Huei, Agdji the Younger’s wife, it is anything but. Though she has done her best to adapt to the nomadic way of life of her new husband, the slaughter she has seen is incomprehensible to her. During the ride on Mangyshlak she gave birth to her first child, Nomoshan, but though both her husband and the Huangdi are thrilled at the birth, Huei sees only a bleak future.

“Everywhere your people ride,” she told her husband, “there is death. How many cities have the Khitans emptied? How many more will you?”

“As many as it takes,” Agdji the Younger acknowledged grimly.

“Why should it take any?” she cried. “I see before me only endless riding, murdering civilization whenever it threatens to put out roots. I see for my children the same life, a cruel life devoid of any pleasure but war and… and barbarism,” she finished, staring defiantly into Agdji’s eyes.

Huei might well have expected her husband to grow angry, but instead she was met with sorrowful eyes full of sympathy.

“I do not know any other life,” Agdji admitted. “I have ridden with my father since I was a young boy. I had no mother worth giving name, nor any ties to a settled life. I do not even know why we must go west. Father has explained it, but I do not know if I believe him, because I have never experienced what we are leaving behind. I do what I do because I trust his wisdom.

"But I can tell you this: in the west, we WILL settle. All the Khitan peoples will give up their horses and take to the life of farmers and city-dwellers, as my father wishes. The civilization that we bleed here is to give strength to us as we go west to find our own civilization. I do not know if that is enough… but I can promise you, it will happen.”

Huei was not sure it was enough, but the promise was at least a hope to live for.

What worried Huei the most was not her husband’s honor, which she had every reason to consider unimpeachable, nor his earnest desire to fulfill the promise he had made, but his nature. She had no doubt that the Khitans could reach the western lands which they sought; if Agdji Huangdi could not take them there, her husband was certainly warrior enough to see it through. Yet that was the problem itself; Agdji the Younger was a warrior, just as his father and his brothers were. They were not merely raised on war, but immersed in it so deeply that it had begun to become everything that they were, the same way that it was to the Emperor. Agdji the Younger was but twenty years old and was already regarded as a legendary warrior like his father, a master of strategy, the stalwart commander of his father’s right flank through the campaign in Tibet and the long wars against the Kuman and Pecheneg Khanates. She wanted to scream at him that he was almost still a boy, yet he already bore the sunken eyes of a man who had taken thousands of lives. How could he settle and rule by law if his whole life had been by the sword?

And so, Ts’ao Huei did something impossibly brave. She went directly to the Huangdi.

Agdji accepted her audience that evening in his yurt, in the privacy which she had requested of him. The Emperor eyed her suspiciously, as well he might have, but he signaled for her to speak.

“I have come,” she began, “to plead for the life of my husband.”

Agdji’s eyes widened. “I expected you to confess to infidelity,” he admitted, “and you tell me now that my son has done something worthy of death?”

“Not worthy of death,” she replied, eyes leveled directly at the Emperor, “but he is being consumed by it even so. I have come to beg his life back from war, Huangdi Liao. It is destroying him. Forgive me, but I fear it destroys you as well.”

Agdji scoffed. “The Middle Kingdom makes one soft, I see. My father warned me of as much. Did your Lord father not wage a brutal war to retain his power?”

“War is necessary,” Huei replied, “and I do not deny your need of it. But what you do is not necessary. You pillage everything. You burn settlements to ash. You destroy everything that makes a land unique. And in the wreckage, all that is left is horses. There are no settlements! There are no people! All you do is destroy, and NOTHING rises in your wake!”

The Emperor stared at her, mouth agape. Huei realized with some fear that she had begun to scream. She doubted that any woman had ever screamed at Agdji before in his life.

“I worry for my children,” she continued quickly, in a more quiet voice. “I worry for the lives that they will lead, and for the future of this people which has now become my own. You have conquered much, and created a vast empire in these lands. But it is an empire of dust, father. You rule over nothing; your governors have more experience in managing affairs than your own house does. My husband told me he does not know anything but war; he does not know how to rule, how to be at peace. He barely knows how to write. How will the Khitan people settle if this is all they know? How can your clan rule, if this is all they know?”

“I do not recall,” Agdji replied, venom dripping from his voice, “requesting your presence from the Qin so that you might tell me how to rule my realm. I have left desolation in my wake because it was necessary. We arrived on this steppe with less than five thousand Khitans, and have now grown into a great host of hundreds of thousands, all riding west. We could not have done so without the steps I took. My father raised me to be honorable always--save, he said, in matters of survival. So it has been that the whole of my life, all of my deeds have been a matter of survival for the Khitans. I brooked disagreement in this from Ituk's house alone--I will not brook it from you, a Han women whose father sits the throne that should be ours!”

“I do not disagree,” Huei replied, ignoring Agdji's barb, “what you did was necessary. Was. But it is not now.

“You did not summon me from the Middle Kingdom to tell you how you might rule, but I know you did summon me to provide my perspective, and here it is: everything about what you are doing now hurts your children, and yourself. War is all any Khitan knows. They do not know trade, nor agriculture, nor rule. They especially do not know coexistence. How many peoples have been wiped out in your great ride? I have heard some of the names: the Qarluq, the Qirghiz, the Alan. Fewer than a thousand Qazars are said to still be alive, and the Qipchaks have dwindled from owning the steppe to being nothing more than western exiles.

“Your people know killing well. They know taking slaves, and raising new sons for war. But they have never been asked to coexist with a people whom they have conquered. Not even in Tibet did you do this--you left the Tou in charge as intermediaries, so no Khitan would ever need to enter that place. Every one of your riders has been raised, for their whole lives, to kill any man who is not one of their own the moment they conquer new lands, and to carry off the women and children. And you intend to send these same riders into your final home, led by yourself and your sons? You have no more experience living among foreigners than your riders do. Even the Tou are kin to you, in a distant way.”

“Even within your host,” she continued, unceasing, “you have eradicated difference. Though your Lord father practiced Buddhism as almost all of the Khitan once did, you have all but pushed out the last followers of the creed. All that is left is your view of Tengri. He gives you power, perhaps--this I cannot deny. But your people have become so isolated as a result. You do not know how to rule, and your people do not know how to accept difference. They only know how to be driven forward, just as you know only how to drive them forth; they only know how to kill those who are unlike them, just as you have raised them to. What land would accept you? Will you burn the lands you are to settle in, as well, so that nothing is left to your children but ash with which to salt the fields, with all those who knew how to build and grow killed?

“That is what I fear,” she said finally. “I fear that the lands you come to will be burned whether you wish it or not, because your people will not accept anything unlike them. Your sons will never stop fighting long enough to live their lives, because fighting is all they have been raised to do. And I fear most that, even if my beloved Agdji sees the danger in what you do, he would not dare question you. You are everything to him. I think he is afraid, but he would die before he spoke against you.”

The Huangdi was silent for some time, and at first Huei believed that she had gotten through to him, but eventually the Emperor stirred and sent her away harshly, with instructions that she should never be so insolent again. Agdji the Destroyer was not the humble man of his youth; a long life as the greatest conqueror in the east had made him prideful and wroth, and he did not--or perhaps could not--accept the advice of the ‘little girl.’

Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he could not admit to Huei, a Han woman of a pretender house, that her words had found purchase. Great changes in the host began the same night that she had seen him. Fast riders were swiftly ordered east to Kashgar, to instruct Yaerud An that the Khitan court should make its way west to Tamatarkha on the coast of the Black Sea, which would henceforth be the capital of the Empire--a capital from which the Huangdi would rule directly, not An as his regent. The great grazing grounds of the Emperor’s herds, which had for several years been located between the Don and Volga rivers south to the mountains, was brought under more formal control, and Agdji the Younger was appointed to administrate the nomadic herds in the region and to ensure that they paid their required tithes to the Huangdi in Tamatarkha. Aerlu’on was given the responsibility of organizing them in defense against Seljuk raids, while Ago was made representative of their interests to the Turburur and Miguniai governates. Whether Agdji admitted it or not, clearly Huei’s words had struck him deeply.

But Huei was politic, and made no sign that she had noticed anything from the Emperor, and Agdji maintained the same fiction. The changes that occurred were made out to be solely of his own thinking, and his son did not even know that his wife had spoken to his father. And well it was that this was the case, for Agdji's hatred of the fairer sex was on the wax, and had any known that he had taken advice from one, even the daughter of an Emperor, he would have reacted cruelly.

But, in the privacy of his own thoughts and the polite fiction Huei had been so gracious as to allow him to construct, Agdji could be grateful. The Huangdi told Agdji the Younger this: “You are blessed to have Huei as your woman. Listen to her always, and heed her well. She may well be the greatest gift that the Qin could ever have sent to us.”

The moving of the administration, and Agdji’s gradual re-focusing of the realm on his person rather than that of Yaerud An, would teach the Huangdi many things. First and foremost, it would drive into the Emperor’s head something which once had been obvious to him, but which, for decades now, he had taken for granted: the vastness of his domain.

With his host’s fast horses and well-trained riders, Agdji could traverse his realm in less than a year, if the weather permitted. But a regular Khitan herdsman could not always do the same in three years, and, for many of Agdji’s traders, moving on from Kashgar was a death sentence to all but the most westerly of their contacts within the Middle Kingdom; the distance was simply too great to maintain stable trade without the use of caravanning. Contact with the east was fading, and with it the memory of whence the Khitans had come.

“We will move even further west before all is done, and I suspect we will reside there for many generations,” Agdji the Younger reminded his father. “If you truly believe we must one day return east, would it not be wise to construct another monument to our people here, on these shores, where it cannot be so easily forgotten?”

“It pains me to think the site of our entry into these lands may ever be forgotten,” the Huangdi sighed, “or the deeds of my father. But once we find a realm of our own, who is to say that anyone will venture so far east for a long while? I fear you are right.”

The cost was dear, but Agdji did eventually commission the construction of another great monument, in similar style to the monument to Dashi still under construction in Emil, but in smaller scale. It, like the monument to Dashi, would tell of the deeds of the Liao, their birthright, and the prophesy of return. Together, the two monuments were to serve as landmarks to the Khitans, pointing them ever back east, to their true home.

Communication with the Middle Kingdom quickly becomes tenuous as the administration of the Khitan state moves west, and Agdji is soon forced to return a handful of bureaucrats and fast riders to Kashgar, so that the Khitans can remain in contact with the Qin. Along with these returned administrators goes Agdji’s third daughter, Yaerud Yash.

Daughter of Sevindik Aepakid, Yash was intelligent and well-trained, but distant from her father. She had not the martial nature of Ordelhan nor the wisdom of Arel, and there were no marriage prospects for her within the Khitan sphere of influence. Although many petty lords begged her hand to spare them from the hooves of Khitan horses, no such offers were ever becoming of a princess of the blood of the Liao, and Yash, who alone of Agdji’s children had been raised among the Uighurs and had lived a sedentary life, turned her nose at the prospect of marrying into such poor realms regardless.

Yet neither was Yash best-pleased remaining with the nomadic Khitan host, and so it was eventually decided that she would go to live her life in splendor among the court of the Qin: Agdji’s repayment of the Qin Emperor’s great gift, his daughter Huei. Agdji thought it best that there be a true intermarriage of the dynasties before the two inevitably lost all but the most limited contact with one another, as he had promised the Emperor Shizu when he had been in Kaifeng. And, to Agdji, it was equally important that he make the decision of his own will, not because the Qin demanded it, or because, as he was when he came to power, he feared their might. The gift of Yash was a final exchange between equals--one of the last such, Agdji thought, for soon the Middle Kingdom would truly be out of reach, for many long years.

Although Huei begged freedom from neverending war, there were many wars which still needed to be fought for the security of the Khitans. The capture of Jand, with its proximity to the narrow stretch of plains which Agdji’s riders used to communicate between the eastern and western portions of his realm, was one such necessary war, and in the autumn of 1192, the host rode to Turgay in order to begin yet another war of dominance against the Seljuk Shah.

During that same ride, Agdji freed one of his unwilling women, Gumus, from her enforced servitude. Taken some nine years earlier as a replacement for Vimala, Agdji’s inherent disgust of Muslims, along with Gumus’s unsightly features, ensured that she was rarely used, and never produced a child for the Huangdi. She was now old, and Agdji had even less reason to retain the service of a Muslim.

Her replacement is Yildiz Baruq, a young, attractive girl with a stunningly adroit mind. Daughter of Girgen “the Despoiler,” her father proved less than capable of resisting the advance of the Huangdi, and his family fell into the hands of Agdji several years before. Her long time in captivity had… unhinged her slightly, but she was not to be his wife, and he did not need her to manage the affairs of the realm. She needed only to look comely and spread her legs at his demand, and in return for her freedom, these things Yildiz was happy to do.

The life of Yildiz Baruq would prove to be one of the great contradictions of the Khitan Empire: a blessing and a curse together, who would both provide greatness to the Khitans and steal it also, and not in equal measure.

Agdji’s earlier scheming has proven fortuitous indeed. On the eve of war with the Seljuks, word reached the assembled Khitan host that the aged Inal I Seljuk had passed in his palace at Yazd, reportedly over the great strain of attempting to cure his son of the impossible ravages which the Khitans had put him through. His efforts had been in vain, and the unhinged Inal II Seljuk was--reluctantly--proclaimed Shah by the nobles and Ulema of Persia.

The timing of Inal the Elder’s death could not have been more fortuitous. Inal II is a grossly uninspiring ruler, even for a Muslim: deprived of much of his faculties through Khitan torture and made a cringing shadow of his old self, his cowardice and insanity make him an easy target for the ambitions of his more powerful, and more capable, vassals. While the goodwill and strong, centralized state built by his father’s reign leave Inal II in a position of relative power in this early phase of his reign, he sits balanced on a knife’s edge. As Ago prophesizes, “the crumbling of a single army will lead to the crumbling of the whole state.”

It is under these auspicious circ*mstances that Agdji and his sons march into Jand, easily displacing the local defenders and securing it. But they do not stop there, no--this war is not like the ones of the past. Persia must be destabilized, and for that, for the first time, the armies of the Huangdi and Shahanshah must meet.

The Battle of Zamin became just another of Agdji’s stunningly unprecedented victories, though in truth it, unlike many of Agdji’s prior successes, was much more in the favor of the Khitans from the beginning. Attacking into the largely flat desert surrounding Zamin, the Khitan host, for once, did not need to contend with rivers, hills, or even trees as obstacles--the most they had to watch for was the heat getting to their mounts, and even this was not a significant concern in the early spring. The advancing Persian army, by contrast, was overconfident in its abilities and led by an incompetent favorite of Inal II who was promoted upon promising to bring the Shah Agdji’s head as a trophy. Although they had great forewarning of the approach of the Khitan host, the Persian nobles did not take advantage of it to sufficiently build up their defenses, and thus the battle was largely decided before it even began.

Zamin is most noteworthy as the only true large-scale cavalry-to-cavalry battle which Agdji ever fought: although many other battles would feature large cavalry groups on both sides, none would have the same numbers or ratio as Zamin, where the Shah deployed his entire personal army of steeds in service of his ambitions to bring Agdji before him in chains. Inal II’s fear and hatred of Agdji precipitated this grave misstep, and Inal’s subsequent troubles, for none was a greater master of horse than Agdji Huangdi, and the enemy cavalry were like children before his prowess.

The destruction of the Shah’s personal armies was almost absolute, and the loss of thousands of levied troops stole much support from the ruler of Persia in the east. The Shah was not only forced to cede Jand to the Huangdi, but to admit that he had lost his father’s carefully-trained personal army in the process. It would not be long before pretenders and claimants would come to call at the fortress of Yazd, now bereft its defenders.

Following the victorious Battle of Zand, Agdji Huangdi made the determination that Inal II’s position was seriously weakened, but not so utterly impossible as the Emperor had hoped it would become. In the name of increasing Khitan access to slaves and resources, as well as weakening the Persian vassalage’s already minimal support of Inal, it was decided that the host would maintain raids across Persia’s far eastern provinces for several months. Beginning in the Emirate of Tashkand and winding down through Ustrushana and Sogd, this was the first “Harrowing of the East,” a process which would repeat itself many times, and wipe out a great deal of Persia’s eastern wealth--and its border defenses on the edge of the steppe. Agdji’s decision to raid along the well-fortified border would have momentous implications not far in the future.

It was during this raid that the Emperor received word that the Turburur governate was collapsing into the sort of anarchy which Agdji had hoped the Persians would. Unsatisfied with his brother’s rule and desiring control himself, Turburur Bi’en had ordered the murder of his brother Baisha-an and seized control of the governate for himself, over the rightful claim of Baisha-an’s infant son Daudjil. Although Agdji the Younger’s wife Huei begged the Emperor to revoke the powers of the Turburur and make an example of them--she was already disappointed that Agdji had ignored her advice to prevent the destruction of the peoples and residents of Jand, which was already burning as all of Agdji’s prior conquests did, and wished desperately to enforce some sense of real governance upon the Khitan empire--Agdji refused her. As he explained his thinking, his refusal was on the grounds that Bi’en had proven himself mighty enough to rule despite his fratricide, and among the Khitan the strongest ruled. This decision, like the Harrowing of the East, would prove to cast long, unhappy shadows.

As the Emperor had hoped, the Harrowing of the East deprived a great deal of men and resources from the already-beset Inal II, and further reduced his vassals’ already fleeting opinion of his rule. Shortly after Agdji began his march back west, the Persian Empire split in civil war for the first of what would be several times during the reign of Inal II. Though isolated the revolt was significant given the dilapidated state of Persia in general, and Inal’s military support for his cause in particular. The rebels sought to place Inal’s brother, Prince Kilic, onto the throne. Although they would ultimately fail and Prince Kilic would be executed, the long and costly war would require Inal to place greater burdens on the rest of his vassalage, and would spell a cycle of nearly constant civil wars that would drive Persia into destitution and devastation, as Agdji had hoped.

When the Huangdi received word of the rebellion, he altered his plans and brought the host south to the Caucasus, to engage in raids over the border in order to further weaken Inal II’s position, and to turn the vassals of the Caucasus against his rule as well as those of the east. It was here that his wife Gulcicek gave birth to her second son, he who was honored with the name of Agdji’s father: Yaerud Dashi. Dashi would ultimately prove a disappointment to Agdji, as he was weak of body and favored tasks of the mind, but he ever wore the name of his grandfather as a badge of greatest honor.

The murder of Baisha-an was disappointing to Agdji principally because he relied on the man to orchestrate his murders for him, but Bi’en proved as capable--and more willing--of killing as his elder brother had been. Unbeknownst to Huei, Agdji permitted Bi’en to retain his governate not simply due to the arbitrary strength of his rule, but in exchange for carrying out the assassination of Saru Qul-opa, whose realm on the Crimean coast stood in the way of the Emperor’s advance in that region. Bi’en proved most capable in this, and barely over a year after his ascension, Khan Saru was dead and the Khitan host was marching on the Crimea.

Nominally a part of the Byzantine Empire, the decision to invade Crimea was met with extreme tension in the court of Basileus Kaloioannes. A military man himself, Kaloioannes was immensely concerned that the seizure of territory by the Khitans would give them direct access to the Empire’s few remaining territories on the peninsula, as opposed to the slow and indirect sea access which the nomads currently possessed by virtue of their capital in Tamatarkha. Although the Emperor did not contest the action (himself only shakily ruling in Constantinople and not in a position to fight a foreign war), it was clear that Kaloioannes expected Agdji to massacre the population of the territory as he had elsewhere, and the court made its displeasure clear to the Huangdi--and made it clear that they would intervene if he ever declared war on a fellow Christian realm, not merely a realm occupying Christian lands.

Yet Agdji surprised the Basileus in several ways.

When the Crimea was eventually seized from the wreckage of the Qul-opa Khanate, the Huangdi gave orders to his men that he had never given before: the people within were not to be touched. They were sons and daughters of a realm which Agdji recognized as worthy of respect, and, as such, they and theirs were to be protected. No towns, tribes nor temples were to be ravaged in the territory; those who were settled there already were to be permitted to live free under the protection of the Khitan Empire.

Yet it happened as Huei prophesied. The Khitans had never known peace, never coexistence; Agdji’s riders were confused and furious at his decision to grant what they saw as weak clemency to lesser people within their own lands, and, despite the Emperor’s orders, his out-riders massacred the Crimea.

And so Agdji massacred his outriders.

He killed over two-thousands of them, even those who did not participate in the slaughter--those who sat by and watched were just as complicit in the eyes of the Huangdi. Any who disobeyed his commands, in word or spirit, were sacrificed to Tengri: their souls were to be damned, and the souls of those they killed spared in their place. It was the harshest punishment any had ever seen their Emperor mete out, and its message was a clear one--not only that Agdji should be obeyed, but that clemency was not a sign of weakness in him.

To Kaloioannes, the death of his subjects was not compensated for in wealth, but in words. To him Agdji swore that the death of his people was unintentional, and would be repaid sevenfold. Although the Basileus did not press the matter, he did not expect the Khitans to actually uphold their promise.

But he would be surprised again. They would, in the most stunning of ways, albeit not within the Basileus's lifetime.

Shortly after the murder of Saru Qul-opa and the conquest of the Crimea, Turburur Bi’en proved to be rather incapable despite his great martial training: he found himself captured, tortured, and eventually killed on the orders of Atrak Pechene, Khan of the last remnant of the once-great Burcalid Khanate. The over-ambitious Turburur have now lost two of their first Khans to murder, and their third, Baisha-an and Bi’en’s father Dilen, was severely maimed by Atrak before being released. He will die of infections from his wounds over a long and painful period lasting over two years, before Baisha-an’s son, Daudjil, will finally inherit as a young boy, the last scion of the Turburur.

Daudjil will live to experience the memory of his father’s murder, the plotting of his uncle against his life, the murder of his uncle and the slow death of his grandfather, and finally his ascension to the Governate with no family left to speak of. All of this, he will know, was either approved of or later written off as insignificant by Agdji Huangdi. And Daudjil’s fury at the Emperor, despite his respect for his capabilities, will bring full-circle the consequences of Agdji’s decision not to topple Bi’en.

While Agdji takes the time to train several thousand replacement outriders and scouts, there is a brief period wherein the Yaerud clan can, finally, take some measure of rest.

It is during this period that Agdji’s eldest daughter Ordelhan finally bears a male heir of the Siau, Siau Uldjin the Younger, to carry on that illustrious bloodline. Aerlu’on likewise has his first son of Tura Daerqa, Yaerud Niauraq, joining together the blood of Ituk and Dashi on Dashi’s patrilineal side for the first time. The dual births are met with great fanfare at the court in Tamatarkha, especially the birth of Aerlu’on’s first son--the eldest of Agdji’s sons having yet to produce an heir had been a matter of some concern.

Yet the greatest dynastic move during the period was undeniably the betrothal and marriage of Yaerud Paudun, Agdji’s fourth daughter, to Tou Hsiu-to, the brother of the deceased (and some say murdered) Tou Ts’au, eldest son of Tou Chim, the so-called Chu Emperor.

The decision to tie the Yaerud clan to the Tou family was not one made lightly, especially given Tou Chim’s claims, regardless of his kowtow. Many within the Khitan state, especially Yaerud An and Agdji the Younger’s wife Huei, advocated the complete eradication of the Tou as a dangerous and subversive element within the Empire. But Agdji viewed them as potentially useful pawns against the Qin, should hostilities ever break out against them, and viewed it as more beneficial to keep them intact, albeit closely-monitored. And who better to watch them but Paudun, who was well-learned and beautiful enough to entrance any man into revealing to her all of his secrets? Not of a martial nature as many of her sisters were, Paudun would not have desired to remain with the host regardless, and was well-pleased to learn that her placement would see her close to the Middle Kingdom, and her elder sister Yash.

But it did not take Agdji long to replace his lost men, and as soon as the host was ready to move, war was soon on the horizon again. Now the Khitans set their sights west anew, on the realm of Khan Blush of the Kumans, and specifically Yedisan.

Yedisan was strategically critical, as control of the territory would allow for movement either south into the Balkans, due west over the Carpathians into Hungary, or north into Poland. Although most of the Khitans were not aware of any of these lands, much less that Yedisan was a gateway to any of them, it was well-known among Agdji’s court that capturing Yedisan and pressing north would allow for the capture of critical mountain passes that would, finally, see the Khitans on the edge of feudal Europe. By now Agdji knew that Europe was where he wished to settle, and knew also that the mountains, should they be as great as rumor had it, were a sign: they must be the mountains of Dashi’s dreams, lying due west of Emil where the Khitan people had begun anew. If they truly were at hand, so too was the end of the Khitan peoples’ long journey.

The Khitans might not have understood Yedisan’s strategic importance, but when told that they were nearing the end of their long exile, they understood THAT well. They rode into Yedisan like a thunderous fury, sweeping aside the not-insignificant armies of Khan Blush and capturing his capital at Zhytomir, forcing peace.

Yedisan was the first territory that the Khitans properly did not eradicate upon its conquest, instead allowing the local peoples to hold their lands and maintaining the local lord, Tunga Tatran, in his position. Tunga’s skill at war was no doubt one of Agdji’s considerations, but Huei’s words weighed on him more--the Khitans must learn now, more than ever, to coexist. The time of rapport was nigh.

The last obstacle in the way of the Khitans before reaching the cusp of Europe was Chief Dundar of Tara de Jos. He and his sworn men were Turkmen like the Seljuk Shahs, but unlike the Seljuk they had retained their original Tengri faith, and something of their nomadic ways. Migrating west in service to the Kuman Khanate, eventually the Turkmen settled on the edge of the Carpathian Mountains, forming their own tribes and continuing to serve as bannermen and tributaries of the Khans to their east.

It was fitting that the Khitans, who had come from the uttermost east, would supplant similar migrants from east to west.

The war against Dundar was not impressive, and indeed hardly worthy of mention; the Khitans, as they had with Khan Blush, marched into the territory they wished to control, systemically occupied it, and eventually forced peace with Dundar. As with Yedisan the locals were allowed to maintain their independence, and Agdji even raised one of them, Tanrivermis, to the rank of High Chief over the region, in order to act as an intermediary for Tamatarkha to the rest of the Turkmen in the area.

No, what was worthy of note was the mountains that, finally, rose up before the Khitans. They sat, snow-capped, like some jagged spur of bone breaching the earth's very skin, marking finally the land Dashi proclaimed they would find: the last mountain to cross, the mountain of Dashi’s Dream. The Khitans had arrived at Europe, at long last.

After the pacification of Galich, Agdji led the host to the foothills of the mountains there. Ten-thousand Khitans and their horses trod slowly, reverently to the base of those great peaks, to see the lands which Dashi had told them, so long ago, would be their own.

The Khitans were not now limited to the seven-hundred riders which Dashi had that fateful day in Emil, over sixty years before, when he had cried out his dream and in doing so motivated his warriors to win the first great victory of the Khitans, sparing them from certain death at the hands of the Turk; Agdji could not speak his words to the whole of his host, so large as it was. But he did speak them to his sons.

“All my life,” he managed eventually, choking back tears, “I have sought to do honor to my father’s wishes, to bring us to the lands which he prophesied we would settle in. But I never believed I would live long enough to see it. My sons, I fought so many battles in which I should have died, but did not. I lived longer than I ever dreamed, and to see this now…”

The Huangdi could no longer contain his tears, and, weeping openly, he sunk to his knees. “DASHI! Father! I am here; I have come! Do you see me? I have brought our people here, to your dream! Here I will settle us, and here we will live, forever, in your shadow; have I not acquitted myself as your son?”

And crying these words Agdji kowtowed to the mountains before him, pressing his face firmly to the muddied ground. And with him bent ten thousand riders, bowing to the memory of Father Khitan.

Chapter 7: The Bringer of Change, Pt. VI - To Be Invited

Chapter Text

European chronicles of the Khitans often claim that the Khitan arrival at the Carpathians was the beginning of a great change in Agdji. The ferocious warlord and conqueror was struck dumb by his arrival at the promised land of Europe, and immediately overcome by zeal for God. Foreswearing unjust war and promising to live always in the light of Christ, Emperor Agdji began the long process of civilizing the Khitans, and they began to love peace.

Of course, these accounts were written centuries later by Europeans who had little conception of the history of the Khitans, and who likewise knew little of Agdji, and less of his mind; it is unsurprising that they manufactured such a trivialized, pro-Christian account.

The Khitans were certainly overcome by emotion upon arriving at the cusp of Europe, but their first instincts were not towards peace--they were the creatures Agdji had bred them to be, and their hopes were to storm across the Carpathian passes and burn the lands beyond to cinder and fallow fields, empty plains in which they might settle.

It was certainly Agdji who curbed these instincts in his riders, but it was not for any love of the Christian God. His thinking was simple yet wise, as it often was: the Khitans had conquered China as pagan nomads, and in so doing they had never truly been regarded as one with the people there. They had been outsiders who their vassals were eager to force out, and the same could not happen here, in Europe--they must be INVITED to settle, not take land by force. They could not change if they stole fields by the sword.

And so, even as the Magyars panicked and swarmed to establish defenses on the borders of their realms, the Khitans simply… left. They returned to Tamatarkha, and joyously welcomed the birth of three of Agdji’s grandchildren that year: Cheu’en of Agdji the Younger, Harubu of Aerlu’on, and Agdji the Youngest of Ago. These three, born in the year of Dashi’s Dream, were afforded special honors as harbingers of the future among the host.

While the Khitans no longer had use for great wars, having arrived at the cusp of their destiny at long last, it was not true that they were ready to settle. Achieving the agreement of the powers of Europe that the Khitans might settle was beyond simply daunting. This was not the Middle Kingdom; there was not a singular realm of importance here. From the moment Agdji returned to Tamatarkha in 1197, the Huangdi found himself in long discussions with Yaerud An, learning all he could of the many realms of Europe, and their histories. He learned soon enough that it was a strange and fractured place, with unclear power resting between the arbiters of the spirits and the lords of the earth. It was nothing like the east, nothing like what he knew. How could he make all agree--how could he even speak to all of them in turn? Few Khitans could even speak the language of the Greeks.

Eventually, as the picture of Europe and its structures of power became more clear in the Huangdi’s mind, he discerned that there were three primary sources of power within Europe: the Church of the West, the Church of the East, and the two "Emperors of Rome". If all could come to agreement about the settlement of the Khitans, the various other powers of Europe would be forced to accept that the Khitan had a right to reside within their lands.

Phokas, Agdji’s long-time adviser, was adamantly against this plan. He cried out that Agdji “practiced heresy” by even thinking of bowing to the wishes of the Patriarch, but the Huangdi had long since discerned that Phokas was a heretic himself. Agdji had him burned at the stake as a result, and to hide his prior teaching on the Christian God from the lords of the West.

Agdji thus continued to feign utter ignorance of Christendom while undertaking many deeds to strengthen it. First of these deeds was the final campaign against the Kuman Khanate, which saw its collapse, freeing the Russian principalities from its control, restoring free Christendom to the east.

Yet rather than receiving warm thanks for his actions, Agdji instead receives a formal request from the Emperor of Rome that he guarantee peace to the Christians who have just been freed from their oppressors in repayment of his debt. The Greeks do not think Agdji freed the Christians by intent, but instead that it was mere accident!

It soon becomes clear exactly what the Christians think of the Khitans: that they are despoilers, barbarians, pagans and uncouth conquerors. No good turn to Christendom could ever be undertaken with intent by them; only by accident would they improve the lot of any Christian.

As if to punctuate the entire realization, the Pope in the West ends the preparatory period of the Teutonic Order and formally calls the Northern Crusade later that same year, with the express intent of forging a realm which could protect the various Russian principalities from “the threats which surround them in abundance.” Rumor of this missive reaches Tamatarkha at the wane of the year, and who the “threats” in question are is obvious.

Such simple and indirect methods, it was clear, would not work. A new strategy needed to be devised, and Agdji soon seized upon it.

Earlier the previous year Agdji’s fifth daughter, Telbe, had been inducted into the Berkutchi like most of Agdji’s children, but unlike her sisters she had been given a further, greater honor. The Emperor had a special place in his heart for Telbe, who was, of all his daughters, the most skilled in war, and the closest to him in temperament; although he was a thorough misogynist, if there was one exception Agdji allowed, it was for his children, whom he often viewed as being made greater than their sex through the influence of his blood.

Therefore, although decades ago Agdji had banned Khitan women from riding in the host in anything but periods of sport or celebration, uniquely of all of Agdji’s daughters Telbe was named coequal with her brothers. She was not only permitted to ride with the host to war, she was even given the honor of commanding a flank, which she availed herself of in the course of many raids, earning great honor and a reputation as a rider of true repute.

Of all things, it was this which drew the attention of a Christian Lord, the King of Sweden, Gotfred. Interested in seeing a warrior-woman in battle, in learning the tactics of the Khitans, and in protecting his realm from potential retribution should the Khitans attempt to destroy the nascent Teutonic outposts across the narrow sea, King Gotfred requested that Telbe be given to his second son, Prince Harald, as the beginning of an alliance between Sweden and the Khitan.

Under normal circ*mstances, Agdji would have denied such a request out of hand--the second son of a minor lord was an unfitting match for a daughter of the Emperor. But Harald stood to gain several governates in his inheritance, and the Huangdi was desperate to further relations with Europe. Upon hearing her father’s request Telbe agreed to serve as a liaison to the Swedish, and to “do honor to the name of the Liao.” Though Agdji was loathe to give up his favorite daughter, he eventually agreed to the alliance in the fall of 1199.

Telbe’s marriage to Harald turned many heads in Europe, not least because it was finalized on the 1st of January, 1200--the turn of the 13th century. The union brought attention to the Khitans from across Europe, just as Agdji had hoped. Now the Huangdi needed only to show the worth of the Khitans.

But God was watching. The chance would come immediately.

The Sunni Caliphate under the Abbasid dynasty had escaped their prison in Baghdad under the Seljuk Sultans in 1169, when Caliph Ziyad succeeded in his quest to claim Nikaea, bisecting the Byzantine Empire and, for the first time in over a hundred years, established an independent Sunni Caliphate. This gave the Abbasids jurisdiction nominally above that of the Shah of Persia, their previous “patrons,” and fractured relations within the Sunni community. The Shah refused to acknowledge the authority of the Abbasids, while the Abbasids refused to legitimize the rule of the Shah.

It was in this context that the Third Righteous Jihad was called by Caliph al-Hakim in 1200. Although a coward and glutton, al-Hakim was learned in the ways of the world, and made a calculated gamble with his decision to declare the Jihad: Turkestan was rightful Persian territory, and by declaring a Jihad for it, Inal II of Persia would be virtually forced to agree to raise his banners for the conflict, in so doing acknowledging the authority of the Abbasids and mending relations between the two most powerful Sunni states in the east. If it worked, it would be a momentous blow against Christianity, and the beginning of the end of Christian illusions of controlling the Holy Land.

Unfortunately, for all of al-Hakim’s knowledge of Islamic politics, he did not know what he wrought in declaring war on Agdji Huangdi.

No power had ever been foolish enough to declare a war on Agdji. Agdji was the one who declared the wars, and his enemies were those who were piled at his feet when they were concluded. The arrogance of Muslims, of all inferior peoples, to declare war--much less their insane notion that they could somehow win it--drove the Khitan host into an almost orgiastic fury. Agdji’s son Ituk came of age during this tumultuous period, and, as a shaman of Tengri, was so inundated with Khitan men dragging their screaming Muslim concubines to him to be sacrificed that he would later claim his hands had been stained red for months after.

But most critical of all was the European response to the conflict. The Caliph’s decision to target the Khitans seemed to be paradoxical when there was still a European presence in Jerusalem, and so many European lords concluded--rightly--that the Khitans were enemies of Islam, and perhaps even, despite contrary reports, the long-awaited arrival of Prester John from the east! The outpouring of sympathy to the Khitans was overwhelming, with hundreds of Christian knights volunteering to fight at their side, and a long trail of lords requesting the hand even of Agdji’s oldest daughter, the 31-year-old lady Ordelhan, recently widowed due to the death of her husband, Siau Uldjin. Eventually the young King of Sicily was decided as her betrothed, but the number of suitors sent to Tamatarkha on her behalf convinced Agdji that the eyes of Europe were watching. It was now merely a matter of opening them fully.

Inal II’s support failed to materialize, as Agdji was certain it would; still wracked by internal rebellions, the Shah could not assist the Caliph even if he had desired to. Bereft of his intended alliance, al-Hakim was on his own, and forced to launch an offensive against Tamatarkha, against his expectations. It was utterly obvious that the Abbasids would launch their assault through their ports at Abkhazia, and so Agdji ordered that the host hold the mountain passes against them--and that observers from all the various European realms be invited to witness the Khitan victory.

Few came, truth be told. There was a contingent of Georgian knights, two chroniclers from Byzantium, a representative of the Holy Roman Emperor, and a handful of archers from Hungary. From these few voices came all records of the battle among Christian peoples.

The two armies finally met on February 20th, 1201, at the foothills of the Caucasus mountains. Almost 13,000 Islamic troops stood against Agdji’s ever-stalwart 10,000, who had been encamped at the site where they had intended to give battle for over six months.

“Sabatios of the House of the Komnenoi, by the grace of God Emperor of the Romans, commanded that I should travel to the encampment of the Khitans at the request of their chief, Ag’ji, in order that I might witness them give battle to the heathens. Accordingly I arrived at the camp in the mid-autumn of 1200 and found it expertly organized and gripped by a constant, well-directed activity. I met with Chief Ag’ji upon my arrival and he greeted me graciously, asking after my health and after the reign of the Emperor, who had at that time only newly come to the throne. I informed him that we were both well and that the Emperor’s reign was strong, but war delayed my lord and prevented him from sending assistance to the upcoming battle. At this the Chief laughed and said ‘That is good--we do not need him! You will see.’

“To this I took great offense on behalf of my liege, and was preparing to leave before one of my compatriots, the Bishop Bardanes of Herakleia, intervened to stop me. ‘They seem uncouth,’ his wisdom ran, ‘yet what if the stories should be true, and this Chief should indeed be Prester John, sent from the east to deliver us? The Emperor has ordered us here to verify the truth of these claims, and it would be unfitting to leave the task undone.’

“I duly checked my anger and awaited the day of the battle, though my confidence in the Chief was greatly shaken, and must shamefully admit that I privately prepared the means to flee should the battle go ill, as I feared that it would; for what barbarian could defeat the same great armies which destroyed our own Roman Empire? But that day my unrighteous doubts were laid to rest, for even as I cried out in dismay at the size of the enemy host, the Khitans took to their spears, mounted their great horses, and, with a unified cry of ‘Jiesu!’ charged the Muslim ranks as one. They drove them back utterly to the sea in great waves of fighting, until, in the end, naught was left but the Khitans, and my utter confidence that before me stood not a Chief but a King, Prester John in truth…”

-“On Prester John,” by John Kinnamos.

Agdji’s decision to have observers from various European realms at his battle against the Abbasids, as well as to charge under the cry of “Jesus,” was planned well in advance. He did not know of the rumor of Prester John, but the Huangdi did anticipate that fighting in the name of the Christian God would radically change European perspectives on the Khitans, and in this he was correct. Despite how fawning most accounts of the Battle of Jiket’i would eventually be towards Agdji, in truth almost all the observers for the battle were only there to advise their lords about what to do depending upon the outcome of the conflict, and most had been positively frigid towards Agdji prior to the engagement. After the Abbasids had been driven into the Black Sea, they could not crawl over one another quickly enough to bow before him.

Of course, as is so often the case, the good came with the bad. As the Khitan host wheeled from Jiket’i and began their march to the Abbasid capital at Nikaea, word reached the Huangdi that his wife, Gulcicek, had been found dead in suspicious circ*mstances--she had been murdered.

Gulcicek had been Agdji’s wife for fifteen years. She had been raised by the Huangdi from the time she was a teenager for the responsibility, and she had sat beside him--quietly but supportively--through all of his greatest challenges, from the invasions of Persia to the wars against the Chu and now, finally, the Abbasid conflict. For her to die, and worse still be murdered, was the last blow to the Huangdi he would allow his heart to suffer. Whatever love for women was left in him died with her; even his daughters he was cool to from that day on.

Gulcicek was replaced by the extremely talented (but mad) Yildiz Baruq, who many chroniclers believe was likely the architect of the former’s demise. It is not clear if it ever crossed Agdji’s mind that this might be the case, but it is certain that he treated Yildiz with none of even the limited respect he had reserved for Gulcicek.

But not all was ill, either--there were happy unions still among Agdji’s children. Ever since Agdji’s reformation of the Khitan government and the gradual transition towards settled life, Huei had been greatly put at ease, and was more confident than ever that she and her husband would one day rule in a truly settled society, governed by the laws and rituals to which she was accustomed. Her relief was reflected in her relationship with Agdji the Younger, which had experienced a renaissance of late. The birth of the prophet-child Cheu’en in 1197 was evidence of this, followed now by the birth of Saradin four years later. The first of Agdji the Younger’s sons, Saradin’s birth reduced the chances that there would be a succession crisis upon Agdji the Younger’s death, and, at least in some small part, served to ease the many burdens of the Huangdi.

But no passive success could salve his fury at the Abbasids, and his impotent rage at the death of Gulcicek. Blood need be spilled to give Agdji the release he demanded.

On the 20th of August, a long, slow line of Khitan soldiers rode down through the Adrianople gate of Constantinople. Many were in awe; no Khitan rider had ever seen a city of its like, and only Agdji’s steely discipline kept them from gawking like the nomads they were.

The streets were lined with quiet whispering as the thousands of riders rode through the city, escorted by thousands of Roman guardsmen in turn. They had been given permission by the Emperor to use the city’s ships to transport them to the other side of the Hellespont, to strike out against the Caliph and do what damage to his rule they might.

There it was, at the port of Prosphorion, that the Huangdi met Emperor Sabatios for the first time. The two men were rumored to have embraced, with the Huangdi saying through his interpreter that, Christ willing, the Khitans would repay their debt to Rome that very year. Whatever the meeting entailed, Sabatios could not have predicted the results in even his wildest imaginings.

With their entire army destroyed, against the Khitan host the Abbasids were powerless. The Caliph and his family hid in terror in Nikaea, which Agdji was quick to exploit. Although the Khitans were no masters of siege warfare, the Byzantine Emperor had lent them enough men who were knowledgeable in such things, and sappers made quick enough work of the city’s walls that Agdji’s cavalry could ride in. Their murderous intent soon became clear as they burned the city quarter-by-quarter, seeking out and capturing every Abbasid they could find.

The Khitan might have begun their long, slow transition back to a civilized life, but this transition was begun by--and almost entirely contingent on the continued support of--Agdji himself. And Agdji, for all his best intentions, had absorbed four decades of utter brutality and betrayal: from Tabuyen, Kyi, Ordelhan and Yildiz's plotting to the literally dozens of campaigns of systematic rape and murder which had brought the Khitan out of Emil and all the way to Galich in less than two generations, Agdji was a creature conditioned by violence. When he encountered a problem, he almost unfailingly solved it with violence, or the threat of violence, and he considered any personal slight as a form of insult--of a betrayal of his image of control. Somewhere beneath the accumulated detritus of a life of war Agdji still remembered a time when he had been bothered by violence and it had pained him to inflict it, but now, well into his fifties, the Huangdi could not have brought himself to think the same way, even if he had tried. He was used to violence; violence was an old friend to him now, a lover he had known longer than any of the women who had stayed by his side. And it was violence he always resorted to when he could think of nothing else that would serve.

If al-Hakim knew what his fate was to have been, he would have killed himself before he was found.

First, he was forced to watch the execution of seven of his courtiers and closest advisors through impaling. This did not shake him, but when he and his sons were forced to watch as his four wives were quartered by four Khitan stallions, he began to sweat. The wailing of his sons as they witnessed the gruesome murder of their mothers turned to panicked screaming as they were dragged forward, one by one, and made to kneel in front of their father. Each was then stabbed through the heart from behind, so their blood splattered directly onto their father’s chest, and he was forced to watch as the life slowly faded from the eyes of all of his children.

Only the youngest the Khitans had captured, Habib, was left alive. This young boy, although beaten terribly, was held in place in front of his father as the Khitans now began to torture the Caliph. They first dislocated his jaw and broke his legs; they severed his hands and put out his eyes; they branded him with characters that named him COWARD, FOOL and DOG; his entire body was lacerated, and he was nearly drowned ten times before finally being given air again. Finally, when it seemed pain could no longer harm him, he was made to scream anew as he was castrated with a blunt axe. And then, after his suffering seemed to be nearing its end, Agdji called forth a healer, and the broken body of al-Hakim was mended as well as it could be.

So he could die slowly. So he could die in agony.

It had been many long decades since Agdji’s people had regarded him as a kind soul. They knew what he was: he was a practical man, with practical goals and the willingness to do anything to see them through.

Or so, at least, they had thought.

Agdji’s treatment of the Caliph and his family revealed that he was not pragmatic, or at least that his pragmatism could be superseded: when insulted, he became nothing less than a cruel sad*st. He was the one who ordered every single punishment which the Caliph and his family suffered, and in the case of the Caliph’s sons, it was he who thrust the spears that ended each of their lives. He enjoyed meting out punishments to the Caliph, enjoyed it so much that he spent most of the remaining days of the Caliph’s pitiful life watching the man’s energy slowly fade as he passed into death. He reveled in his power over the life of he who had dared think he could conquer the lands of the Destroyer.

This was taken better by some of the Khitans than others. Aerlu’on, Agdji the Younger and Ago all took it in stride, having fought beside their father for many years. But Ituk--who was young, unproven and had never ridden with the host due to his weak constitution--was aghast at Agdji’s harsh treatment. The day after the torture began he gathered men to his banner, and within a month he marched on from Agdji’s camps, away from the Khitans “forever,” so he claimed. He would seek a life separate from the madness of his father’s lust for death.

al-Hakim clung to life for almost two months, in constant agony. His son was left with him, both outdoors and unshielded from the elements, tied to chains just out of each others’ reach. The older man was weak, and with his broken jaw it was hard for him to speak, but from time to time he attempted to comfort his son--though every time he did he watched a Khitan guard ruthlessly beat the boy, and soon learned he was not to speak: he was merely to exist, to force his son watch as he slowly ceased to do so.

But eventually Agdji grew tired of the continued persistence of the Caliph despite all the mutilation his body had suffered, and ordered that he be nailed to a cross and denied water, as Jesus was said to be. What better way to murder a heretic?

Agdji was there the afternoon the Caliph finally breathed his last. He smiled a contorted, rictus smile as the man’s son cried louder and louder, grew more and more desperate for some sign that his father still drew breath. And as the boy began to cry, Agdji was released from his burden. The debt of dishonor had been paid in blood.

At the place where al-Hakim died, a marker was rapidly constructed. It was little more than a stone with Chinese characters carved into it, but for those that could understand them, it read: “THE PRICE OF THOSE WHO WOULD FIGHT THE KHITAN OF THEIR OWN WILL WAS PAID HERE.”

After it was raised, the boy was left to go, although not before being beaten severely one last time, and denied the corpse of his father, which the Khitans carried away themselves, to unknown ends. Cold, naked and alone in the Anatolian winter, so began the rule of al-Zahir.

When the Khitan finally arrived back at the Golden Horn, they were duly ferried across to the city once more, wherein they provided to the Byzantine Emperor the head of al-Hakim in proof that they had repaid their debt, as well as assurances that the Abbasid family had been “blooded,” and the countryside around Nikaea ravaged. Agdji told Sabatios via interpreter that it would be wise to strike the Caliph now, for he was a young boy, tortured by thoughts of the death of his father and ill from exposure. The way to Anatolia was open.

And just like that, the Khitans left. Despite being within the walls of Constantinople and no longer needing anything from the Emperor, they rode out quietly, respectfully, without requisitioning or even requesting a single thing. Upon leaving the city for the fields outside they wheeled as one and raised their spears, ten-thousand strong, in salute--but then they left, as honorably as they had come.

All-together, the Khitan’s unparalleled victory in the Jihad, as well as their civilized treatment of the Greeks, propelled them from barbarians in the eyes of Europe to noble warriors in the highest demand, champions of Christendom, scions of Prester John. “Khitan” was no longer a frightful word used by women to scare their children, or councilors to terrify their lieges; the coming of Khitans was welcomed, for it was known that they were a good and honorable people who would keep the true barbarians at bay. Opinion had finally turned.

No Khitan would ever speak of what Agdji had done to the Caliph's family, and whatever Muslim chronicles spoke of it were denounced harshly as the propaganda of heathens. It would take until the 17th century before it became broadly accepted that Agdji had, indeed, brutally tortured and murdered the family of the Caliph rather than killing them nobly in war, as all the Khitan chronicles from the 13th century on had insisted. Had Christendom known the ease with which Agdji could slip into casual brutality, the carefully-cultivated image of a good Christian would slide from him like rotting skin sloughing from the bones of a bloated corpse. Agdji was a wolf in sheep's clothing, and his only redeeming trait was that he wished he were not.

With his victory over the Caliph and his friendly behavior towards the Greeks, it was certain that the Eastern Empire and Church would agree to allow the Khitans to settle in Europe. While Agdji had yet to have contact with the Western Church, he had since learned of the rumors of Prester John, and he found it unlikely that they would refuse him, so long as he proclaimed his loyalty to Jesus. The only uncertain element that remained was the Western Emperor, who was rumored to control vast swathes of Europe and remained hostile to the Khitans, despite their successes against the Muslims.

Yet Agdji did not know whether he required the cooperation of the Western Empire at all, for he did not yet know where he wished his people to settle. Eventually, it was decided that Agdji would travel with a small band of followers into the Empire to meet with the Emperor. This served many purposes, not least giving Agdji a break from constant warfare. On the journey he could test his skills against fighters in the Empire, learn more of European customs and geography, and, if all went perfectly, perhaps even gain the Emperor’s blessing to settle in his lands.

Before Agdji set off he was met by a Bishop of Hungary, one Lajos, who had been sent by his liege, King Bela III, to attempt to discern whether or not the Khitans truly were the army of Prester John. They had heard the reports from Constantinople by this point, but the Western Church was apparently skeptical of the Eastern, and both the Pope and Bela III were both eager to urgently learn more about the Khitans and their beliefs.

Agdji received the Bishop and allowed him to remain at Tamatarkha, but was elliptical about the beliefs of the Khitans.

“Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?” Lajos asked him.

“I do,” Agdji replied. “I received a vision from him to come west at the beginning of my people’s journey, telling that we would find a great chain of mountains in the furthest west where we were to stop, and there make our home among the faithful there.”

“But did I not see the practice of sacrifices in this very camp?” Lajos pressed him.

Agdji looked carefully at his interpreter before slowly answering, “God has demanded unusual things of us. We have known him all our existence as Tengri, Father Sky. We abandoned him in the past, and he visited great wrath upon us, so that we had to flee from the east. My father led the last faithful to the steppe, and then I returned us to the proper faith upon receiving my vision and came to the west in response. Our Tengri is the same being as your Jesus, but due to how we displeased him, he demanded sacrifices of the disloyal among our people.”

“Jesus would never demand such!” Lajos cried. “He was sacrificed for our sins--no further payment is required for salvation! It is heresy!”

“Your people have never displeased God as ours have,” Agdji sighed. Such sorrow was in his words that Lajos--trusting to a fault--actually believed him.

Agdji spent the remainder of the year traveling through Germany at a rather leisurely pace, challenging local knights as his drunken entourage required him to, slowly winding their way toward the lively Thurgau, and the court of the Western Emperor. Soon enough, however, Agdji’s shows of strength against the nobility of Germany had killed one too many second sons, and the Khitan envoy found themselves under armed escort on their way to the capital.

The meeting with the Emperor… did not go well. Agdji still did not understand any language other than Khitan and the pidgin of the Middle Kingdom, and none of his men knew anything other than a smattering of Czech. It took hours to come to any understanding at all, and that “understanding” was much closer to a barely-polite “get out of my realm, and pay me a ransom when you leave.” When the Khitans refused to do any such thing the Emperor attempted to have their weapons seized, at which point Agdji rather easily cut down the attackers despite his advanced age, but for some reason this seemed to only make the Emperor more furious.

Eventually, safe passage out of the realm was agreed, but the Emperor swore that the Khitans would have nothing of him. This did not disappoint Agdji, though, for he had learned what he needed to--the Emperor’s lands might be large, but the man’s rule was weak. He was beset by civil war, and so desperate for men that he could not even spare extra to capture the Khitan envoy. Agdji did not need his support.

Upon Agdji’s return from the West, Sugr was awaiting him at Tamatarkha, having made the long journey from Kucha in order to serve as regent during the Huangdi’s absence, and in case the host needed to be used in order to recover Agdji. Thankfully Agdji had been able to extricate himself from the Western Empire without great concern, and his return to Tamatarkha was made all the sweeter by the news that he learned from Lajos upon his arrival.

The news flew from Tamatarkha, borne on the fastest horses which the Khitans owned: a conclave had been called to determine whether the Khitans truly were the people of Prester John, and, if they were found to be, they would be given land to live in. Agdji Huangdi had truly done it, even without the Western Emperor’s support--the Khitans were on the cusp of being invited to settle within Europe. It was yet possible that Agdji might take his people from uttermost east to west in a single lifetime, and moreover have them welcomed to their new home willingly.

Chapter 8: The Bringer of Change, Pt. VII - The Conclave of Galich

Chapter Text

Of course, Pope Gregorius VIII had not called the conclave out of kindness. Though he was indeed a kindly soul he was also a zealot, as many Popes were, and viewed the reports of Khitan syncretism as deeply disturbing and, likely, heretical. Nevertheless, three matters forced Gregorius’s hand: Agdji’s insistence that the Khitans followed Christ; the Khitan expedition against the Abbasid Caliphate and the resulting rumors that the Khitans were the people of Prester John; and, surprisingly, the support of Sabatios, the Byzantine Emperor.

The two “just” rationales behind calling the conclave involved the Khitans directly, and fed into one another. Agdji swore that the Khitans followed Christ, and in Christ’s name he had won tremendous victories against the Muslims, victories the scale and ease of which the Christians had not been blessed with since 1095. The Huangdi had also proven himself a civilized man among barbarians, respecting the people and property of his Christian neighbors; this respect earned him respect in turn, which was further buoyed by the ebullient praises of chroniclers such as John Kinnamos, and eventually led to the rumors that the Khitans were the people of Prester John, the promised saviors from the east, which united the Western and Eastern churches to a degree not seen since 1054.

This unity in hope also led to the “unjust” rationale for the conclave, however: political necessity. The first individual to declare for the conclave was Patriarch Dositheos of Constantinople, and Sabatios rapidly backed him: both were eager to acknowledge Agdji as Prester John in order to repay him for his deeds in Anatolia. Yet if the Eastern Empire backed the Khitans and the West ignored them, Rome was convinced that one of the mightiest armies in the known world would become little more than puppets of the Basileus. This the Pope could not allow, and so agreed to call a general conclave rather than allowing Sabatios to dominate an isolated one.

But simply because Gregorius accepted the Conclave did not mean that he intended to permit the Khitans to be declared the people of Prester John--he, rightly, perceived that they were likely simple charlatans, wearing the cloak of Christendom to suit their purposes. By agreeing to the Conclave the Pontifex Maximus was able to set some of its conditions, and to determine his own representatives there. Lajos of Hungary, who was firmly pro-Khitan, was reluctantly selected due to his time spent at the Khitan court, but along with him was to go Catholic bishops from almost every realm, to mirror the Orthodox request that all their various Patriarchs should travel to the Conclave. Yet the Pope wisely selected a German Cardinal, Benedict of Wurzburg, as his personal representative. Pressured by both the Pope and the Emperor to convict the Khitans of blasphemy, as their dual representative Benedict bore most of the weight of Christian efforts to see the Khitans withheld from Europe.

Two further restrictions did the Pope place upon the Conclave: first, that the Khitans would be forced to provide a rigorous accounting of their current beliefs, and to explain in detail their Christology. Second, the Pope made it clear that, as the representative of both the Western Emperor and Rome, Benedict was to have two votes, making his impression worth double the weight of any other one representative. Symbolically, his weight was even greater: as the direct political representative of the Emperor and Pope, should Benedict vote against the Khitans, then the entire Catholic Church would almost certainly turn away from them, declaring them heretics.

This news was met with alarm by Sabatios, who perceived that he had been outmaneuvered. There was a difference between being the only Christian denomination to formally accept the Khitans while others kept no stance and being the only one which accepted the Khitans while the other denominations fully and flatly denounced them. Should the Roman Empire back the Khitans while the Catholic Church denounced them, the Schism--which seemed closer to being mended now than ever before, with both Churches willingly sitting in Conclave (albeit not on a doctrinal matter) for the first time since 1054--would become a greater gulf still, and might even reach levels that would cause the Pope to declare the Eastern Church worthy of military suppression.

Rather than the risk of the Conclave, it’s rumored that Sabatios begged Agdji to simply convert clearly to Orthodox Christianity. This would undoubtedly result in the withdrawal of the West from the Conclave; certainly it would destroy any attempt of a universal agreement that the Khitans were the people of Prester John and chill relations further between West and East. But it would spare the total breakdown that a split vote at the Conclave would cause, and Sabatios promised the heart of Anatolia to the Khitans in return: lands of his own which they might settle in and rule autonomously.

But Agdji flatly denied the very idea of such a compromise. “We have not come from east to west, through blood and struggle, to accept a beggar’s bargain. We have come to see our great vision made reality, and we will achieve it at all costs. We will stand above you and unite you; we will stand beside you and shield you. We were meant to be of you, and with you--all Europeans, all Christians.”

Agdji’s refusal of Sabatios’s offer was, perhaps, predictable. In any other circ*mstance, the Roman Emperor offering a lord virtual total autonomy within his realm and control of vast swathes of territory would be an all but unmatchable gift, but to Agdji it was simply not enough--not enough independence, nor enough recognition. Dashi’s Dream had to be fulfilled in its entirety for Agdji to rest easy, and though Dashi never even hinted that the Khitans would find their home peacefully, Agdji’s insistence upon such a requirement had caused it to be retroactively written into the narrative: Europe, all of Europe, had to INVITE them to settle for Dashi’s Dream to be completed. And so the son of Father Khitan, Agdji the Destroyer, he who had never lost a war, was determined to face what he believed would likely be his most furious confrontation: a battle of words, not swords. A type of fight that Agdji was gravely unsuited for.

Agdji was not stupid. Despite possessing no inherent genius his mind was (and always had been) adroit, and, perhaps more importantly, the Huangdi was an adaptable sort. Out of necessity he had taught himself to read simple things just a year beforehand, in his twilight years, no less: he was not so hidebound that it would be impossible for the Conclave to see the Khitan point of view. But it was stacked against the Khitans, and this Agdji knew well. From the end of November to the beginning of April, when the Conclave was set to commence, the Huangdi pored over Christian teachings along with bishops sent by Sabatios in order to prepare Agdji for the difficult questions of the Catholic delegation. His stated Christology, should he truly wish to find acceptance from both Catholics and Orthodox adherents, would need to be the most carefully complex of any yet devised.

For months, the Eastern and Western churches bickered over the location of the Conclave, with the Byzantines naturally supporting Constantinople, arguing that it was the logical midpoint of travel between the Khitans and the Pope, while Gregorious balked and demanded a “neutral” location, such as Buda (which just so happened to be a Catholic city in a Catholic realm).

Eventually, the deadlock was broken by Agdji’s suggestion: a conclave at Galich. It was in Khitan territory and therefore neutral between the two Churches, but was also occupied by Russian Christians who were happy to host a Conclave. The Hungarian army could protect the Christian delegates as Galich was directly on its border, while the deliberations could be undertaken in relative safety and comfort: as a Christian province held by settled people, though hardly wealthy Galich was nevertheless no backwater, and boasted true towns and estates that were more than comfortable enough for the needs of the representatives.

Agdji’s rationale for holding the Conclave at Galich is obvious: Dashi’s Dream absolutely had to be made reality at the Mountain of Dreams; the Khitans had to enter Europe by “crossing” the mountain, and they could symbolically do so by being given land to settle at the foot of its great slopes. But whether Agdji intended it or not, the suggestion of Galich would prove fortuitous. Agdji’s utter lack of pressure on the delegates--his refusal to attempt to bribe or threaten them--further enhanced his credentials as a noble King who could, as he argued, stand above the doctrinal squabbles of “other” Christians.

The first days of the Conclave were spent with introductions, and establishing the sequence of events which brought the Khitans west. It was during this period of initial discussion that Agdji told his half-truthful, Christian-sterilized version of Khitan history, which later became canonical.

According to Agdji, the Khitans were descendants of the Indian peoples who had been converted by Saint Thomas, and, as the only ones to see the glory of God in the east, had been made His chosen people in that un-Christian land. With God’s blessing and protection, they formed a great Empire, the splendor of which was unrivaled. Yet over the centuries they grew decadent in their power, and turned away from God to the false beliefs of the locals. God gave them chance after chance after chance to repent of their foul ways, but the prideful Khitans refused, and more and more of their number foreswore their faith. In the end, Agdji’s father Dashi, the last loyal God-fearing Khitan of the royal family, received a vision telling him to take up the mantle of his people and bring them away from the east, for the decadence of the Khitan had destroyed His righteous presence there; no eastern peoples would see His light, so tainted was it by the Khitans. It was in this vision that God told Dashi of the Mountain of Dreams, the symbol of the Khitans’ arrival at Europe and communion with others of their faith, and demanded the sacrifice of those proven unfaithful in order to pay for the untold blood of the believers lost in the east.

Dashi accordingly took up the mantle of Huangdi and fled the Middle Kingdom just as his peoples’ realm fell to barbarians and was utterly destroyed. Leading no more than two thousand Khitans in a hopeless anabasis from the heart of what was once his realm, Dashi was protected by God, and, in the end, his House and those who followed them became the only Christians of the East to be spared, from which all the current Khitan clans descend.

This narrative was expertly-crafted. It contained within it enough truth that it was nigh-impossible to prove false by questioning the Khitan riders, and moreover contained many parallels with existing Christian myth, including the flight from Egypt and return to Israel from Babylon. It even included Saint Thomas as the origin-point of the Khitan people, which fully meshed with European beliefs about the likely origins of the people of Prester John.

There was simply one problem: Prester John’s people were meant to be Nestorians, and clearly the Khitans were not.

“We expected heretics,” Cardinal Benedict told Agdji, somewhat undiplomatically. “Yet we expected our brother Nestorians, a heresy we know well, and which is misguided, not foul and unseemly; yet here we have before us your people. Skilled in war, to be sure, but protected by God? I do not believe so. Your use of human sacrifice, your claims of being a ‘chosen people,’ are anathema. Saint Thomas would not have begotten you as you are.”

“He did not,” Agdji agreed. “We became as we are. We learned, through great trials, to become the people that we are now. I will tell you shortly enough what it is to believe as a Khitan does.

“But if our claims to being a chosen people bother you, know it was only for so long as we ruled in the east, alone and without other Christians--we have since lost any such claim. As for the sacrifices, do you not also burn your heretics? There was ritual to it, but such was what God demanded. Now that we should enter Europe, those sacrifices will also end; our punishment now changes.”

“What ‘punishment’? What is this change?” Lajos asked.

“We went against the will of Tengri and paid the ultimate price,” Agdji explained. “Our realm, our people, and our place of honor were all lost. We were saved by His will, but we have not, and perhaps never can, repay Him for what we have caused Him to lose in the east. His will was made manifest to us: we are to be a shield to Europe. Our sons are to die in the place of yours, for so long as we may survive.”

This raised a great stir among the various delegates, and all immediately asked Agdji to explain himself.

"If you should provide us lands to live within and welcome our people and our ways to your own, we shall die for you," he said simply. "Wherever we are to settle, we will create for Europe the safest frontier there has ever been; our men will bleed in place of yours, and no foe will breach our guard unless we should all be killed to the last. We will stand beside you and shield you, to the last: such was His will."

This statement raised an even greater stir than before, especially among those delegates from border realms, such as Poland, Hungary, Byzantium and the Spanish Kingdoms. What would it mean to have Khitan troops, rumored to be the finest in the world, guarding their frontier? The Khitans won much support for their promise.

But it was never going to be so easy as that.

“Whether you are to defend us or not,” Benedict interjected, “is irrelevant until we should determine whether your beliefs are heretical. Tell us now, Emperor: what is it that you believe?”

“We believe,” Agdji said, “in Jesus, the Son of God, who was crucified and died in the name of our sins.”

“As do we all,” Benedict cried, exasperated. “But that tells us naught; what is your Christology? Are you dyophysite, as your supposed progenitor was?”

Agdji was quiet for a long time, and when he eventually spoke, his words were slow, but clear and measured. “Our position,” he said, “is that it does not matter.”

The entire room was stunned silent. The nature of Christ, the savior, was unimportant? The very idea was the highest blasphemy!

Yet Agdji continued on. “The nature of the divine is unknowable. Tengri is the Greatest, so high above even the mightiest of us, in mind and spirit, that even the smallest fragment of His will is unknown, and unknowable. He deigns to visit upon us what morsels of knowledge we need to live just lives, and no more. What of His will and being we can understand is gifted to us from Him directly; as flawed beings, inference and analysis teaches us nothing true. He has not told us of His son’s nature, and therefore it does not matter; we do not need it to live by His will.”

Patriarch Viacheslav of Polotsk, a junior advisor to the Conclave, stood at these words and cried: “It is heresy! It is arch-heresy!” Dozens of delegates stood with him, shaking fists and crying “Heresy!” Almost, it seemed that all was lost.

But then Agdji asked a simple question: “What has seeking this knowledge done for you?”

The clamoring voices of the various Bishops and Patriarchs continued for several minutes, but Agdji kept repeating the question until, eventually, the new face of the Khitans’ opposition, Viacheslav, was forced to reply.

“It has taught us more of God, barbarian!” he cried.

“No,” Agdji replied ruefully. “You cannot know Him, and even if you could, still none would agree. Focusing upon this irrelevant minutiae has gifted you nothing but dissolution. It is your apple in the garden; you seek knowledge which was not meant for you.

“I see no one Church here. There is only bickering--the bickering of those separated by a finger’s width that they call a league. How many Churches are there, and how many Churches did there need to be?

“In the east, there was one Church, and one state. This was the innovation which we made, what made us able to survive in that hostile land. You have so many various realms, so many fractured little churches, but we suffered no such thing. We simply WERE--singular and united, because we accepted that only what was critical must be enforced.

“We were sent west as punishment, but also as a lesson to you, our fellows. And I will tell you our lesson: the tighter the grasp, the more slips through the fingers. You have already almost destroyed yourself with your foolish posturing; how many lands have been lost to Christendom? How many lands were abandoned simply because their faith was so slightly different to your own?

“You have killed yourselves, and called it progress.”

“We do not abandon beliefs which are cornerstones of our faith!” Benedict spat. “Steadfastness leads not to destruction!”

“They are no cornerstones,” Agdji replied, “but I did not ask that you abandon them. All that I ask is that you accept us as we are: peacefully ambivalent. Tengri is almighty. That, and the contents of the Bible, are all we need to know to honor Him. Accept that mysteries mean nothing to us, and fracture the faith not further.”

Agdji’s decision to not make a decision was the most brilliant move the Huangdi could ever have made. No position could ever have been so Christologically nuanced as to be acceptable to all sides, and so Agdji rightly perceived that the only correct move was to refuse to adhere to the rules which his opponents demanded he play by. He was determined in two things: that the Khitans should be invited to Europe universally, and that they should serve as a unifying force to these fractured realms. Only by being religiously accepted by all of them simultaneously could the Khitans achieve their goal, and this was only possible by standing above their petty and irrelevant disputes.

But not merely Agdji’s decision was well-made--his argument was likewise. What HAD the Christians gained through their persistent disunity? The Huangdi had never before seen a people who struggled so much to be so divided, nor heard the history of a people who had lost more to the smallest of things. It was a sad tale, and one which, should the Khitans truly take up residence here, they would wish to rectify.

“After 1055, the Roman Empire almost collapsed,” Agdji finished, and Sabatios winced. “But cooperation began then soon again—in 1095, the two great sons of Christ reunited in purpose and gained great victories. But what then? Mistrust returned, and, with that disunity, all the great gains of the First and Second Crusades were lost utterly. So God punishes those brothers who turn on one another.”

“Join with us,” Agdji said. “If you cannot enter into communion with one another, enter into communion, each of you, with us. If both of your great creeds should accept us as legitimate, is that not but one step removed from utter reunification?

“As I said before, I say now: we are to protect one another, to teach one another. We will shelter you. But we will also reunite you.”

No doubt the Conclave would have devolved then into infighting and disagreement over the Khitan position, had not Cardinal Otgotz of Weimar stepped forward. Like the Pope, Otgotz was a kind and humble man who was pained by the suffering of people everywhere--but unlike the Pope, Otgotz cared little for the deeper rituals and Christology of Christianity. He was the quintessential Christian in spirit rather than in rigid form, seeking salvation for all through pious behavior and flexible proselytization. And, importantly, he sat just behind Cardinal Benedict in authority.

“I have heard,” he said, “this just and wise King called now a barbarian. Do you not hear his words? Do you not hear the truth of them? The Lord God might not be so unknowable as Prester John claims, but it is undeniable that, in searching for things to disagree upon, we have divided ourselves and lost almost everything that was given unto us. Heed his words! His people turned from God’s will and were almost utterly destroyed. They were saved only to come here, and to save us in turn. If we should turn away from him now, what will God do to us? Where else is there to run to; what other Christians are there worth saving? We must make for ourselves a future now, together--and if not an utterly unified one, one undertaken as the closest of friends.”

As soon as Otgotz made his position clear Sabatios and Patriarch Dositheos immediately backed him, and, reluctantly, the various Russian Patriarchs followed the Ecumenical Patriarch’s lead. Lajos of Hungary, as well as the representatives of Poland and the Iberian states, soon also backed Otgotz, eager as they were to have Khitan support, leaving Benedict with a shaky core of Catholics who were seriously divided on the issue.

Eventually, however, the matter was resolved as the Conclave issued a compromise statement: the Christological position of the Khitans was not heretical, but it was not canonical, either. Yet this left both sides open to enter into communion with them, as Agdji had offered.

This, of course, was not the end of the matter. The compromise on Christology was, in fact, only the beginning of Agdji’s accounting, even if it was the most difficult hurdle to overcome.

“Hu-ang-dee,” Benedict said slowly, struggling with the word. “What does it mean?”

“There is no translation,” Agdji replied. “It is not something I could explain even if I wished to; I was born on the great plains, and came never into full knowledge of my people’s ancient realm. Only my father could have given you a true answer.

“It is akin to your own Emperors--but different, and more. It is to be the all-ruler, the arbiter of Tengri on Earth, bound by no laws but God’s while giving law to God’s children.”

The Conclave again grew dangerously quiet. Agdji had, in a few sentences, claimed more than the Pope or Emperors alone had claimed. Even Sabatios could not support him if such was his wish: to rule all, and to be God’s agent on Earth both.

But when the Conclave denounced these words again as heresy, Agdji held up his hands for calm. “This is only what was in the east,” he placated, “and I have already said, we have since lost what we claimed there. The title means nothing here, and holds no dreams of dominance. If it did, take this not as threat, but ask yourselves: would I have stopped my host? I could have marched on, had I wished war and dominance.”

Yet this did not appease many. Even Sabatios still sat uneasily, and Benedict led a party which demanded that Agdji formally foreswear the title.

But Agdji refused him.

“If the price for my entry to these lands,” he cried, “is to be greater than the desolation thrice-over of the great Muslim realms of Persia and the Caliphs, which I have already made good, I will not pay it. And the loss of what makes my people who they are is the greatest price any could ask of me!”

“Who now pridefully refuses to stand down?” Benedict smirked, but Agdji shot him a glare that sent the old bishop withering back down into his chair.

“It is not a matter of pride,” Agdji lied. “It is a matter of who we are, and who we were. The memory of the east--the memory of the first and last Christian realm there--exists now only in us, and in the little we have taken with us. If we are to forget what we were, then its memory is fully dead. Our laws, customs, names… they will all wither away to nothing.”

“My name is not Prester John,” Agdji continued. “I am not even Agdji! I am Huangdi Xianqing of the Da Liao, of the dynasty of Taizu, son of Tianyou Wulie, he who is Dezong, last of the Khitan Emperors. That is who I AM; they are not simply titles. They are my history, and the history of our people is within them. You I give to call me Agdji because it is the custom of your lands--but it is not the custom of mine. Time itself is written into the records of our true names.

“If you wish for me to say now that I hold no designs on your lands, I will say it--I would say it regardless. If you wish for me to say that my title means nothing here, that it is no different than that of your Kings, I will say it. If you wish for me to say that my title holds no special place before God, I have already said it. But I will not give that title up. It is part, among the last parts, of who we are.”

The flurry of names in a strange tongue which Agdji’s translator let fly into the Conclave chambers did little to impress the delegates there, but his vehement defense of his people and beliefs were clear--as was his willingness to disassociate the title of Huangdi from any of its eastern implications, at least while residing in Europe. Accordingly the Conclave agreed that Agdji and his heirs could continue to refer to themselves as Huangdi, though now that title would be considered inferior to that of the Emperors, and could likewise continue any of their Eastern practices and laws which did not “clearly interfere with Christian belief.”

The Conclave took an extended recess following this compromise, and when it returned Agdji was again placed in an uncomfortable position.

“We hear from many of your riders,” Cardinal Otgotz sighed unpleasantly, “that you worship the sky.”

Agdji shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “We respect the heavens,” he corrected. “God resides therein, as you all know, and when we pray, we pray with our faces to the stars. But we do not pray TO the stars; we simply thank Tengri for placing them there for us. Stars have guided us often in our long journey: on endless plains with no features to navigate by, the sun and the stars are sometimes the only means of telling one’s direction. But once more, we do not worship the stars, nor do we view them as in any sense divine, or interlocutors of the divine. We do see them as one of God’s gift to us, however, and in that way we are eternally thankful for them.”

This answer seemed satisfactory to the Conclave, and Agdji was about to relax, but then Benedict stood.

“I am also told,” Benedict said, “that you personally are married to four women. Is this true?”

The Emperor struggled to suppress the nervousness which surged to overtake him. No lie would save him here--and the truth might not, either.

“That is incorrect,” Agdji replied. “I have been married three times. My prior two wives died, one to… illness, the other to an enemy’s blade. But were you to ask if I have more than one partner: to this I would answer yes. I take with me three camp women.”

Mutterings went about the Conclave. What King had not had mistresses? Who of the assembled men of Christ had not had a woman, or boy even, at least once in their lives? None dared call it heresy outright, but few were pleased.

“I, and my people, have done only what we must to survive,” Agdji said, interrupting their quiet contemplation. “As I have said before, my father, Dashi, arrived on the great plains with but a few thousand souls, and not enough men to survive. We have taken women from the tribes we have conquered… as necessary. When they agreed to convert, they were married. When they have refused, for those who were Muslims, they have been used to strengthen our own waning numbers. In this way we have grown to vast sizes in but a few generations. My father had seven children, and I myself have eleven, and I suspect I will have more before I am called to God. We have not done this gladly, but out of simple necessity to survive. We have attempted to besmirch the holiness of marriage as little as possible, however: each male rider is given in marriage to but a single woman, and each woman, whether concubine or wife, has but one partner.”

Though the Conclave still formally condemned this behavior of the Khitans, following Agdji’s explanation, it also acknowledged it was a sin undertaken in necessity: it permitted the Khitans fifty years to completely eradicate concubinage within their peoples. In the same breath it offered passing praise to the Khitan attempt to protect the sanctity of marriage through the practice of “female monogamy”--that is, ensuring each woman had a single partner only, even if men had more than a single woman. This particular offhand reference would have far-reaching an unintended consequences for Christendom. It would be centuries before western Kings would stop trying to justify their mistresses on the basis of Church-sanctioned "female monogamy."

Yet, if the unintended consequences of an unnecessary line in the condemnation of Khitan concubinage practices was to have far-reaching consequences, it paled in comparison to a simple transcription error, one that would cause a paradigm shift in the Khitan family unit, and draw constant debates from Christians on all sides--the Khitan included.

Enough has been written on the subject to fell a large forest; enough ink spilled to turn the Danube black. Arguments for and against, theories positing one origin or another, most from the Khitan themselves, have polluted all chance of historical objectivity. But the facts are thus:

When Agdji was asked about the nature of his people’s concubinage practices, he mentioned that the Khitans favored taking as concubines those who were “close in appearance and relation” to themselves, meaning the various tribes of the steppe. Undoubtedly this was to placate the Europeans and reassure them that none of their people would become concubines, and at the time the discussion continued without concern.

But when the draft of the Conclave’s determinations was later compiled, the wording of Agdji’s reply had been changed. In the Khitan-language version of the document, the wording had been altered to refer not to people with shared origins and history, but the actual word for a kin-group: in other words, one’s family. Why the Khitan bureaucrat who transcribed Agdji’s words did not check with him is unknown, yet when that same bureaucrat complained that the European representatives had incorrectly written down his liege’s words, the Europeans did go to Agdji, and asked him how closely Khitans married their kin. When Agdji replied, truthfully, that they did not typically marry closer than second cousins, the Christians determined that, whatever the Khitan practices were, they were religiously sound: they edited their documents to reflect the Khitan version. In so doing, they rubber-stamped wording which the Khitans would view much differently.

As it so happened, the Khitans tended not to marry their kin at all. In the ancient past there had been many tribes which were all closely related, and cousin-marriage was an important system of alliance. That trend was maintained in some small ways into the Imperial period among the greatest noble families, but ever more rarely--Dashi’s marriage to Tabuyen, his cousin, was one of the last such marriages, for most of the ancient dynasties died out during the flight from the east. When Agdji answered that second-cousins among the Khitans could marry, it was only a technical truth; second-cousins COULD marry, but they almost never did any longer, as familial groups searched further and further afield for new brides and concubines.

As one can imagine, in an environment where even distant incest had been almost entirely abandoned by the Khitan, suddenly having an official document of their faith (passed through Agdji, the “Prophet of Tengri,” no less!) telling them that they should seek marriage within their kin groups led the Khitan to conclusions which Agdji never intended. As he proved by marrying all his children (save Ordelhan) to unrelated individuals, and especially by marrying Telbe to Harald of Sweden, Agdji was quite willing to seek far afield for matches, and even to marry into other European dynasties--he had only wished to keep the Khitans from taking concubines outside of their nomadic kin.

But, soon enough, a radically different interpretation of Khitan marriage would surge forth, fueled by the mis-transcribed passage: that the Khitans, the chosen people of the east led forth through Tengri’s grace from certain death in the Middle Kingdom, were of a pure blood which could not be mixed with that of lesser peoples, lest it be diluted and their God-given uniqueness lost. Each clan was a nation unto itself, and while each Khitan could marry another, it was holiest to maintain each clan in a state of perpetual inter-union, following the example of Adam and Eve’s children.

Of course, the process of sacral incest becoming a Khitan institution would take decades: Agdji would first need to be recognized as a prophet by the Khitan people, and the transcription of the Conclave would need to be studied by a priest-class which, at the time of the Conclave, largely did not exist yet. Moreover, for Agdji's children, even if they were tempted by the mingling of their flesh with their own blood, it would be impossible to do so openly while Agdji still watched over them, for the Huangdi's will in this was clear, and he did not favor any of the intermarriage which the priestly class would eventually imply was his intent.

The Khitan aristocracy, and especially the House of Yaerud, would ever have a complicated history with the “kin-group clause”; in order to retain the support of Europe, if nothing else, they tended to fight it more than adhere to it (with one notable, and damning, exception). But its existence would change the nature of Khitan behavior going forward for centuries, and, after the practice became entrenched among the commoners, would cause mass condemnation, and even the specter of war, to rise from west.

The problems behind the misinterpretation of the kin-group clause would be further magnified by Agdji’s final, insisted point: that the Khitan Church had no formal hierarchy.

“In the east,” Agdji explained, “our Church was magnificent. We had a Patriarch who ordered our affairs, and a great multitude of priests to minister to the faithless. But as our people began to turn away from Tengri, the Church was among the first targets. Emperors of my own House dismantled the Church, until even the Patriarchate was destroyed. When we fled west, we took with us only a handful of priests: some of the last.

“In my father’s vision, God denied us the right to build our own Church again, for we had squandered what we had been given. His manifest will was that we should exist at the mercy of the leadership of the Churches of the West.”

“We have not the size to care for your entire flock!” Patriarch Dositheos cried.

“And neither shall you need to,” Agdji clarified. “We have priests of our own, and they do minister. But we shall not have a hierarchy: this it was that was denied to us. The highest one of our men might rise is as you would call a bishop of a small region. The leadership of the Churches must make the decisions which our bishops will adhere to--though I warn you now that demands to abandon of the beliefs I have here stated will not be tolerated.”

The assembled clergy eagerly agreed to this, and why not--it gave them tremendous power over the Khitan! Or so they believed, at any rate. In reality, it was a calculated ploy by Agdji to ensure that no powerful Khitan Church could arise to challenge his authority, and by making the de facto leaders of his people’s religion external to the Da Liao, he ensured that his priests would be more autonomous; any disagreeable demands from the West could be mitigated through his power as Emperor. But, importantly, in order to control the Khitans, the Eastern and Western Churches would need to continue to cooperate--another nail in the coffin of disunity, so Agdji hoped.

Of course, the unintended consequences of this decision would also reach far. When each priest was autonomous, heresy was all-but-inevitable.

With the rituals of the Khitan belief lain out and the nature of Khitan requests and obligations likewise established, it was only left to put the matter to a vote.

Agdji had impressed many of the Christian delegates, and obviously had the total support of Sabatios and the Eastern Church. That in itself did not mean so much as it might otherwise have, however: although Sabatios was in the midst of reconquering many of his lost principalities, the Roman Empire had still suffered a tremendous amount of trauma through its loss to the Second Righteous Jihad, and its voice did not have the kind of weight that it might have possessed in stronger times.

Indeed, the Orthodox Church backing Agdji so strongly was more likely to push the Catholics away than anything, as they would inevitably come to see Orthodox support as pre-arranged, and the Khitan as little more than puppets to the Basileus. Although Agdji had skillfully mitigated these concerns by offering the Catholic Church influence in the religious management of the Khitan by denying the Khitan a hierarchy, this was not immediately agreed upon as acceptable--would not the Orthodox Church still have undue influence?

As a last-ditch gambit to influence the vote, on the night of the closed-door discussions on the matter, Agdji provided one last argument in favor of the Khitan. “Untold thousands of riders live under my banners. Every man who praises Tengri knows my name, and my will. Should you accept me, you will bring hundreds of thousands of men and women fully and firmly into the fold of Christ; but should you deny me, as I have before said, I must turn south and leave these lands, to unknown ends. Who replaces me on these steppes may well not be so beneficent as I.”

By all accounts, the debates between Christian delegates raged behind those closed doors. Although vague notes of the debates were kept, most have been lost over the years, but those which do survive show that the arguments between sides were multitudinous, touching on virtually every issue of difference which Agdji had ever mentioned. Weeks of debate passed, and it seemed that the Conclave would end in deadlock--better than a split vote, but a sorrowful precedent regardless, and perhaps fatal to the Khitan dream.

In the end, however, the greatest Khitan enemy was the one who finally proved their deliverance. Benedict switched sides.

“I do not know,” the Cardinal said on the final day, before the final vote, “whether these Khitan are truly people of Christ.”

This claim was met with jeers from the Orthodox crowd, which Benedict held up his hands to silence. “To me, they still do not seem it. You cannot deny it yourselves: they do not tell us the full truth. I am not the wisest of men, and even I can see this.

“But I will say this: even if they hide some matters from us, they are an honorable people. They saved the realm of Emperor Sabatios without requesting pay. They stopped their rampage across the steppe on the edge of Europe, and harmed not a single subject of any of our realms. They are willing, and indeed prepared, to die on our behalf to prove themselves, even as they give over control of their Church to us.

“I do not know--no, I do not believe at all that they are Christians. Not yet. But I do believe that they desperately wish to be, and that they are willing to honor every one of their agreements to become such. We owe it to such a people, to such honor, to give them that chance. I will vote that they should be acknowledged and settled within our borders, such that they might have the time to prove that they are truly people of God.”

That very night, the vote was made in favor of the Khitan, and Agdji Huangdi was called forth to attend a Catholic mass presided over by Benedict, and to receive communion from the Cardinal under the warm stars. The following morning the Emperor took communion together with Sabatios from the hands of the Ecumenical Patriarch, and so it was done: Tengri was acknowledged as one and the same as the Christian God, the Khitan position was declared non-heretical, and the Khitans entered into full communion with both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

In any retelling of the Khitan Conclave, Agdji’s opinions are typically obscured; he is seen as nothing more than an opportunist, trying to make the best of a poor situation for his people. But the reality appears to have been more complicated than that. In his latest years Agdji was one of the most syncretic of all the Khitans, matched only by Aerlu’on. While it is clear that even so late as his middle-age he viewed the Christian God and Tengri as entirely separate entities, as he aged Agdji began to see Tengri as the eastern personification of Jesus, visible in the skies as he could not become manifest on Earth. He truly came to believe in the Christian God as the highest power, and to see Tengri as but the personification of Jesus which had personally shielded the Khitans and had given him the power to ride west, even despite all the mighty obstacles which had stood in his path.

Why this was, especially when Agdji's first interaction with Christianity was so negative, is not clear; it could be argued that it was simply Agdji convincing himself of this, as he viewed it as necessary to become Christian in order to be welcomed into Europe, yet was unwilling to abandon the faith of Tengri. Whatever the reason, by the time the Huangdi finally settled within Europe, it seems undeniable that Agdji truly believed that Tengri was Jesus personified in the heavens. And, to Agdji, the Conclave may well have been something more than any historian to date has ever dared to argue: despite the obfuscations and outright lies, it might have been undertaken out of legitimate zeal.

But the Conclave had one final decision to make. The Khitans had been acknowledged as Christians, and had entered into communion with both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches; they were welcome to settle within Europe. But now land needed to be found for their settlement, and that was no simple prospect.

The Iberian Bishops, as well as Byzantine officials and Russian Patriarchs, all clamored for the Khitan to settle among them. But the Iberians were put off when Agdji flatly refused to be made subservient to anyone--he would rule a realm only independently--yet also (rightly) refused to be handed but a pittance of land. 450,000 Khitans could not survive in a space so small as one of these European Duchies!

The same concerns soured the Russian princes, who still wished the Khitans to settle near them, but not among them; they had precious little land for themselves at present. Although Sabatios repeated his offer of granting the Khitans Anatolia, he maintained that the coast must go to the Empire, and Agdji knew better than to trust that the Byzantines would always be allies to his people--settling in a landlocked region would make them vassals of the Romans in all but name.

Proposals to settle the Khitans in the Holy Land as a Crusader-state were refused by the Khitans out-of-hand, on the grounds that they came to settle in Europe, not outside of it. Besides, they had no facility with boats, and no means of acquiring enough to transport all of their people regardless.

Eventually, it was Carles, Hochmeister of the Teutonic Order, who struck upon a controversial, but nevertheless popular solution: the Northern Crusade had failed, but surely the Khitans could claim victory where the Teutonic Knights could not. Why not settle them in Poland?

Poland, which had itself once been the gatekeeper of Europe, was now a waning--some would even say collapsing--power. Ever since the death of the last Piast King Boleslaw IV in the early 1180s Poland had been in complete retreat. Eventually the Gryfita dynasty, of Pomeranian stock, seized control of the Kingdom from the rightful successors to the Piast. The current King, Wlodzimierz, was born a Wend, but adopted Polish customs when he came to the throne, and had attempted to style himself the legitimate King of Poland.

But, in the opinion of the Church, he was not.

The Gryfita were only two generations removed from being pagans, and their conversions were, on the whole, not seen as legitimate. Wlodzimierz was both intelligent and diplomatic, which had saved him to this point, but he was a rather sinful man underneath his diplomatic façade, and his son, Kazimierz, while behaving more piously than his father, was even quite public in his opinions that the Church was corrupt and had mistreated Poland by constantly calling Crusades to the Levant rather than to the East!

The Northern Crusade had been an attempt to placate the Poles, but when the Crusade began the Gryfita refused to support it, in large part leading to its failure. They then went on to lose two subsequent wars against pagans to their east, sacrificing even more land. It was now estimated that fully half of Poland was under the control of pagans, and the Christians therein suffering terribly at their hands, all because the Gryfita were more focused upon conquering Pomerania, which they considered their true birthright.

Thus, when Carles suggested that the Khitans could retake Poland when the Gryfita could not, not even the Polish Bishops could muster much disagreement--the Gryfita had embarrassed the Church with their refusal to fight in the Northern Crusade, and eastern Poland did need to be reclaimed, somehow.

The final draft of the Conclave agreement contained some concessions to the Polish King, but they were few indeed. Wlodzimierz would be given two years to make progress toward regaining his eastern territory, during which time Agdji would begin the organization of the Khitans to settle in their new homeland. Should Wlodzimierz make no progress towards recapturing eastern Poland in that time, the territory would be considered legally the property of Agdji Huangdi, who was “given all the possessions of the Chiefs of the Lithuanians within and about the territory of Poland which God gives that the Khitans might hold.” In other words, if the Poles could not make progress towards recapturing their lands, anything east of their current borders the Khitans could claim, so long as it was held by pagans and they could win it away from its current rulers.

Predictably the Poles disputed the Conclave and refused to accept its conclusions, but the rest of Christendom agreed to the conditions, as the Khitans made it clear that they would defend Europe’s eastern frontier as a condition of their settlement. This put Wlodzimierz in an impossible position, especially as the King of Hungary continued to demand harsh indemnity payments from him in response to his defeat in an earlier war. With little money and few troops, Wlodzimierz was all but doomed to failure.

For the Khitans, it was the final and uttermost vindication. A date was set for their deliverance: on the 1st of May 1205, they would march into Poland, and to their future.

The general European confirmation of the findings of the Conclave of Galich marked a watershed moment for Christian unity. For the first time, Christians of multiple denominations had stepped forth and acknowledged that their survival and brotherly unity mattered more than doctrinal squabbles, especially those which were not outright heretical. Even if it was a far cry from true reconciliation between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and even if many of the eastern Christian denominations were denied representation at Galich, it was the beginning of something much larger. With hundreds of thousands of Tengri adherents suddenly being recognized as Christ-fearing men and women of the faith, Christianity’s numbers swelled alongside the diversity of its adherents; the rule of Christ stretched now from Lisbon in the west to the very edges of the Middle Kingdom, at the base of the great monument to Dashi at Emil.

Under the overwhelming influence of the Huangdi, Tengrists everywhere fell firmly into line with the new creed. Most were glad to; Agdji was, after all, the Huangdi, the supreme warlord; if he said his hand was blessed by Jesus, how could any doubt him? Yet those few who did refuse to fall in were marginalized, declared pagans, and license was given to their Christian neighbors to destroy them. This was an hour of wolves for true followers of Tengri: an hour in which the Khitans, utterly ascendant, demanded final submission from their kin, not merely to their ways of war and life, but to their new faith as well. Those who resisted, whatever their position, did not long survive the struggle. None but those who were true would be given license to accompany the Khitan people to their new, eternal home.

Chapter 9: The Bringer of Change, Pt. VIII - The Great Catastrophe

Chapter Text

Although the struggle within the Khitan state to make Christianized Tengrism uniform was immense, little enough of it fell on Agdji’s shoulders; neither the Huangdi nor his sons returned to Tamatarkha to oversee the implementation of the new Tengri-syncretist state religion. Yet this was not an hour of idleness for the Yaerud clan; instead, Agdji turned his attention to raiding, leaving the state under the control of Yaerud An.

In Agdji’s calculus, which was supported by An, the Khitans simply did not have the kind of funds which would be required to build a true settled society. Their wealth was fabulous, extravagant even, but it paled in comparison to the needs of their people. There were hundreds of thousands of Khitans, and they would require towns and residences, tools and plows, fortifications and arms; there was simply not enough money for all of it. Even slave labor could not account for the difference, and requesting assistance from the Christians was out of the question: the Khitans needed to portray themselves as utterly independent, and relying on the Christians so soon after settling would do nothing but make them seem weak.

Thus, the Khitan host began what was intended to be a two-year period of fierce raiding. Any realm which had not accepted Jesus was a target, and the Khitans were given especial license by Agdji to be brutal. “This,” he told his lieutenants shortly after the campaign began, “will be the last of our days as barbarians: hereafter we return to our civilized lives. Let the men behave as they wish: hereafter, they will be men of law and faith once more.”

It’s little surprise that a campaign which was baldly designed to be an orgy of indiscriminate violence, rape and pillage would lead to a child conceived. Yildiz would soon become pregnant while accompanying her husband on his last mad rampage.

Would that she had not.

There was nothing wrong with Yildiz’s child. Quite the opposite, in fact--and therein lay the problem.

Some short weeks before the birth of Yildiz’s boy, Agdji the Younger’s second son Diluguin was born. Although he would be hailed as a sign of the favor of Dashi as the first Yaerud born following the symbolic “crossing of the mountain,” and indeed although Diluguin would go on to prove himself quite capable and even Agdji the Younger’s likely heir, he was not Djoborin, and Diluguin’s sharpness of mind would eventually seem to pale in comparison to that of his uncle.

Djoborin was the first child born to Agdji Huangdi after the crossing of the mountain, and the Khitans naturally saw Djoborin as the true sign of Dashi’s favor, not Diluguin; Dashi passed his blessing down directly through Agdji, his only living son. Although his birth was inauspicious (having been birthed in a farmer’s barn on the outskirts of Kartli), eventually Djoborin would be seen as the preeminent claimant for the title of Huangdi under the precept that “the strongest rule,” first articulated by Dashi and enforced by Agdji. Strong, tall and a true genius unmatched among all the Yaerud, Djoborin seemed to combine the greatest skills of his father with all the intellect of his mother, and none of her madness. Blessed by prophesy and his own great skill, many whispered that the lad had been destined to become Huangdi, sent to the Khitan by Dashi himself. Some even went so far as to suggest that Djoborin was Dashi come again, returned to life from the Buddhist cycle of rebirth following Agdji's completion of his life's work.

This was a problem. Agdji the Younger’s line was meant to rule, mixed as it was with the blood of the Qin Dynasty, and the Huangdi would, to his dying day, place all of his great influence behind the family of his second son. Yet Djoborin would always be seen as more strongly blessed than his nephew Diluguin--prime fodder for a great civil war.

Shortly after the sack of Kartli, Yaerud Ituk returned from his sojourn to the south. His small band of disloyal Khitans, which had deserted the Host following Agdji’s torture of the Abbasid Caliph, had been defeated at every turn and eventually scattered to the winds. Although Ituk had gained valuable experience in war from his many battles, he was eventually forced to do exactly what he swore he never would: return to his cruel father for support, tail between his legs.

But Ituk was surprised and pleased to learn that Agdji now called Jesus his Lord in truth, hoping that Christianity would temper his father’s more ruthless tendencies. Although it did not (not in the slightest), this was the small wedge needed to bring Ituk around to a conciliatory mood, and his father found him to be apologetic about the circ*mstances of their prior parting. Agdji was conciliatory in return: although not permitted to travel with the host, Ituk was named the “Khitan Bishop” and given control over the Christianization effort among the Host, a position of great influence and high trust. Although Ituk would never regain his father’s total confidence, the two did successfully cooperate for the remainder of their days.

News of the Khitan quest to secure wealth and resources so that they might construct their great new cities in eastern Poland quickly spread throughout Europe. The many Christian realms, newly united in their support of Agdji and the plight of his people, responded generously, many with spare resources and special tithes from their Churches. One of the most gracious of these tributes came from the Doge of Venice, who promised over 500 ducat-weights of gold as a bride-price to lay the hand of Agdji’s daughter, Ordelhan, in those of his son, Enrico III Dandolo. To this Agdji gladly acceded, and both parties were greatly pleased: Agdji gained enough funds to all but construct a city, and Enrico II gained the great honor of marrying into the blood of Prester John himself.

More impressive--and unexpected--was the about-face of the Holy Roman Emperor, Hugo Etichonen. Infuriated by the betrayal of his hand-picked representative at the Conclave, Emperor Hugo was little-mollified by the simple concession wrung from the Huangdi that his title sat beneath that of the Emperor. In a deeply insulting letter, the Emperor demanded that Agdji swear fealty to him as the “heir of Rome, greatest of Empires,” in return for which he would “allow” one of Agdji’s daughters to be betrothed to his son. For a man ruling an empire in the process of fracturing, it was at best a humorous joke.

But Agdji proved to be diplomatic. In a carefully-worded reply the Huangdi acknowledged the Emperor’s title as greater, but avoided any implications of fealty, while agreeing to betroth Nomoshan to Hugo’s son Theodorich in exchange for an agreement from the Emperor to recognize Khitan possessions in Poland. To this the Emperor accented, finally dashing all Polish hopes of resisting the conclusions of the Conclave, and, importantly, setting a critical precedent: that the Khitans were free, and capable of negotiating as nobles of an stature equal to that of a Christian King.

When Agdji was formally acknowledged as a Christian, one of the unintended side-effects of the concubinage clause prevented children who were born to concubines from being, in the eyes of the Church, legitimate. Thus, when Agdji’s seventh son was born, the local Catholic Bishop positively refused to agree with Agdji’s argument that he was a trueborn son--and, shockingly, the Orthodox Bishop agreed. In the absence of a local Church hierarchy, which Agdji himself had forbidden his people, he was bitterly forced to acknowledge his son, but could not legally see him legitimized.

This would begin a years-long liturgical battle between the Khitans and the Catholic and Orthodox Churches over the legitimation status of the children of concubines--for what was the point of concubinage if not to provide legitimate Khitan children who could inherit; what service did increasing their numbers provide if the children were bastard-born, and denied most rights? Although the determination would come too late for young Toqsoba, eventually the decision would be reached that, for the fifty-year period of the Conclave’s terms, Khitan children born to concubines could be legally legitimized, but only after going through a process of Confession.

Although originally the date set for the Khitans to come into possession of Poland was set for May of 1205, two years of preparation proved far too little to ready the host to move into the territories that, by that point, had legally become theirs: the last of the great Khitan monuments in the east were entering their final stages of construction, Agdji and An were waging a fierce conflict against the Christian churches over the fate of little Toqsoba, and the raiding parties were still ravaging the Seljuk Empire’s territories in Persia. The host could simply not come together quickly enough to launch their assault on Poland in good time.

As a result, Agdji negotiated with the King of Poland--indirectly, through the King of Hungary--and agreed to give him nine more months to attempt to retake eastern Poland. This was a calculated ploy on Agdji’s part: there was no way the Polish King could prove successful, but giving him the illusion of extra time would allow the Khitans to secure even more funds and better-prepare for their invasion, all while further turning the Christian realms against the incompetent Poles, who would be seen as having been given chance after chance to retake their lands, but never making a single move to do so.

Predictably, all occurred exactly as Agdji Huangdi had foreseen. On the 20th of February, 1206, the Khitan host finally sat ready in the territory of Belz, with Agdji at its head. At 62, he was no longer a man in his prime--but he had in him at least one last, great campaign of conquest.

What had delayed the Khitans the longest was not raiding, but awaiting the completion of the great monuments to Dashi and Agdji on the steppe. The Huangdi proved entirely unwilling to begin his campaign without the immortalization of his peoples’ past being completed, and the workers were forced to work at double-shifts to finish them in a timely manner.

But, by January of 1206, everything was completed. In Tamatarkha, a great two-sided statue had risen. Carved of a solid block of marble, on its one face, turned west, a likeness of Agdji rose, his great spear in his left hand and his right arm outstretched, pointing west to the great mountain of Galich. At his back, hewn of the same block of stone, stood Dashi, with his war-axe in his left hand and his right raised and extending eastward, to Emil and the ancient home of the Khitan people. The great plaques at the plinth upon which the monument stood told an abbreviated version of the deeds of the Khitan, but overall impressed but one message upon its readers: the Khitans must go west, but one day they must also turn east again, to the land at which the memory of Father Dashi beckons.

In Emil, the great monument to Dashi had not recently risen, but was recently completed. Plated in gold and sitting atop a Buddhist temple (one of the last remaining in all the Khitan lands), the massive horse sat Dashi upon his back. The Emperor appeared youthful and energized as he extended his axe westward, a manufactured memory of the glorious Dashi arriving on the steppes to save his people. It looked nothing like the haggard, tired man who had arrived there some seven decades ago--but at least it did him honor.

When word arrived in Tamatarkha that the monuments had been completed, Agdji finally joined his awaiting host and selected his two flank commanders. Unsurprisingly, the first was Agdji the Younger. One of the most skilled fighters of all the Khitans--second only to his great father--and the heir presumptive of the Liao, Agdji’s place at the flank was taken for granted. But Agdji Huangdi surprised many by selecting as his other flank commander Ago, his third son. This was perceived by many as a snub to his eldest son Aerlu’on, whom Agdji had passed over in the succession to favor Agdji the Younger.

Aerlu’on had always been a quiet and unassuming child, and though he was skilled in war he had never matched the prowess of his brothers. In any group but one of Khitans, he would be one of the foremost military minds of a realm. But among the great Khitan host he was seen as one of the least effective of Agdji’s martially-minded sons, and, in terms of skill, it was little surprise that he had been bypassed. Yet, on the eve of the most important series of wars which the Khitans might ever fight, to bypass Aerlu’on once more could breed nothing but resentment in the eldest of Agdji’s children, who has ever been the most loyal to his father, but had seen none of the rewards for that loyalty. He would fight in the war, true--but he would command none.

Agdji himself, oblivious to the strife which this selection might well have raised among his children, prepared to give what might well be the last of his great war-speeches.

“I have little that I can say to you now, at this hour. Decades ago, now, my father rallied your own fathers--and, yes, grandsires or even their fathers, perhaps--by telling them that the ground upon which they rode was not fit for them to die upon; they sought the Mountain of Dreams, and the promise of a greater future. That dream has held us, the children of their hope, together through great hardship. But now here we sit upon our horses’ backs BEYOND the Mountain of Dreams, at the precipice of riding north into a territory which has been set aside for us to call our own. The promised future will soon now be fulfilled.

“What can I, who am the only son of Dashi, say which is worthy of this day? What words can I speak which will carry even the faintest echo of the wisdom of Father Khitan, whose memory has held our people together through all of their great struggles to this moment?

“I cannot speak as my father did, for I am a greatly different man than him: more accomplished in war, perhaps, but less so as a man, and I am not ashamed of admitting such. All I can offer you is this pale imitation of his wisdom: the foothills of Emil, a land which we now consider sacred, was not worthy of the blood of your fathers. How much more sacred must the lands ahead of us be, to be baptized in the blood of Khitan men! So I say this: do not feel shame if you die here! It is the greatest honor to soak this land with the blood which will make it our own!”

It was not the greatest speech Agdji gave, and many of his riders shifted nervously to hear him speak of their deaths. But by now, every Khitan rider was naught but a slave to Agdji's will, and they marched at his beck loyally; on the 20th of February, 1206, they rode furiously north to make their long-dreamed future a reality.

The first realm to feel the thunder of the Khitan hooves was to be that of Svaigaudis of Barthi, he who had most benefited from the collapse of the Polish monarchy. The largest single landholder in eastern Poland and no slouch as a commander, under normal circ*mstances Svaigaudis would have perhaps been a formidable foe. Yet these were not normal circ*mstances--Svaigaudis had long been bled by King Laszlo II of Hungary through a war over Peremyshyl, and was facing off against ten-thousand Khitan horse.

The border villages had been captured by Khitan outriders within a day of Agdji’s declaration of the great crusade, and before a month had passed the entire army arrived at Sieradz. With its lord captured by the Hungarians and having been raided by Laszlo’s armies to the extent that little was left to the region already, Agdji’s horsem*n petitioned for the right to raze Sieradz’s settlements to the ground, and carry away the booty.

But Agdji denied them. This campaign was a new one; these homes and temples were no longer objects of pillage, but the very locations which the victorious Khitan would soon occupy. And so Agdji demanded due respect to the local populace. Though the Lithuanians who occupied these lands were enslaved as pagan filth, the Poles who the Lithuanians ruled over were spared and returned to some petty positions of power in every city through which the Khitans marched. It was made clear to them, of course, that they were subservient to the Huangdi and would need to make room in their towns and villages for hundreds of Khitan migrants, but no longer would they suffer under a pagan yoke. Christ was honored by the Khitans as they marched through every hamlet, and the Polish priesthood, long-since having taken to the woods to avoid capture by the Lithuanian elite, soon returned to their parishes. The grateful priests preached loyalty to their new King, Agdji, and in so doing became complicit in his conquest.

As it happened, Agdji did not entirely forget about Aerlu’on. His eldest son, rather than riding with the army, was given temporary lordship of the newly-conquered territories to the southwest. His orders were to pacify the local population, ensure that a restoration of the Polish nobility did not occur, and “coordinate with the Polish clergy” to ensure that they preached loyalty to Agdji and distanced themselves from King Wlodzimierz; the Khitans could not afford a direct fight with the Polish King from a diplomatic standpoint, and thus Agdji felt it prudent to ensure that the Polish priesthood kept any ‘wayward’ towns and villages from thinking it wise to betray the benevolence of the Khitans and swear renewed loyalty to their de jure King. Although it was still an immense dishonor to be denied the chance to fight, Aerlu’on carried out his duties with gusto and skill--after the first two villages that attempted to defect to Wlodzimierz were found to be mysteriously devoid of all life, all the other Polish settlements quickly caught on and ceased attempting to resist.

So it was that, with their rear secured, the Khitan host pressed northeast, towards the center of Lithuanian power in the region, the hillfort at Barti. On the way Agdji the Younger received word from his wife Huei, who had been left behind at Galich, that she had given birth to a healthy son whom she had named Qutug. This was to be the third of Agdji the Younger’s male children, and a strong guarantee that the Emperor’s line, mixed with the blood of the Qin dynasty, would not so easily be snuffed out.

On the 14th of November, 1206, in what will eventually be remembered as an extremely cold winter, the Khitan host finally encamped at a settlement which the local heathens referred to as Tolkemit. It was here, on the shores of the frigid Baltic Sea, that Agdji Huangdi, his lavish oriental regalia striking the Lithuanian delegation dumb, received their people’s submission. With the execution or enslavement of the entire Lithuanian leadership caste and the utter eradication of their centers of worship and shamans, the brief Lithuanian rule of Poland was decisively ended.

This accomplishment alone was worthy of song: a feat that Christian lords had struggled to accomplish for decades the Khitans had achieved in nine months. But it was not enough for Agdji, and rightly so. Many minor Lithuanian lords continued to rule in the north, along the same sheltered coast where the settlement of Tolkemit was located. The Conclave’s declaration ceded to Agdji any non-Christian land east of the Polish King’s current realm, and so the ownership of those lands was within his right, if he could conquer them.

“It is frigid enough here to turn the sea to ice,” Agdji the Younger complained. “What benefit is there to conquering a dozen hamlets? I fear for the Khitans who would be settled in such a place!”

“Fear for yourself, then,” his father replied drily. “Here, on this coast, will be my capital.”

Agdji the Younger and Ago could hardly contain their surprise. Indeed, Ago was aghast.

“You intend to rule from this hamlet?” he cried. “Are we to abandon the Mountain of Dreams for a hillock?”

“The prophesy of Dashi calls for us to pass beyond the Mountain of Dreams,” Agdji replied lightly. He turned to the sea, and its cold breeze bit his bones--but there was opportunity in that chill, also.

He smiled as he turned back to his sons. “I am learning, finally, the wisdom of the east. I am learning to rule. My time in Tamatarkha has taught me of wealth, and its importance. To live on the sea is to be connected, and to have a hand in great trade. The coast of the lands we conquer is likely to be the wealthiest land in our entire realm, Ago, and it will certainly be the point by which we communicate with all but the closest realms of Christendom. And that is why I will have it. This hamlet,” he said, gesturing widely around him, “will become the most grand abode in the whole of our lands. Here I will raise our Xi’an, the golden center of our golden state.”

The following day, after a brief rest, the campaign to secure the coast was undertaken in earnest. With no history of Christian occupation, the conquest of the ‘golden center’--Prusa, as it was called by the natives--was destined to be a much bloodier affair than the conquest of Barthi, and indeed the rivers flowing into the Baltic soon ran red with the blood of those who refused to foreswear their heathen gods. The golden center, by the orders of Agdji Huangdi, was to be pure.

The scouring of Prusa reminded Agdji Huangdi of an uncomfortable lesson in insurgency--not since his youngest days and the desolation of Kashmir had Agdji faced a resentful populace on the scale he now faced there. In the past, rebellions could always be dealt with quickly and harshly: any brave men and boys who got it in their fool heads that they could resist the Khitans were rapidly slaughtered whenever they gathered together, and within a few years at most, the region they came from would have seen all of its towns, temples and fortifications variously burned, pillaged, and sapped to nothingness. With no way to sustain a sizeable population, the problem of rebellion would go away on its own.

Not so in Prusa. The Khitans intended to occupy those lands, and so they could not very well burn the settlements they would soon rely on to house their own population. Similarly, they required slaves and men familiar with how to farm, as the host had all but completely forgotten that skill since their flight from the Middle Kingdom--and, even if they had not, the agricultural techniques of the east would not have availed them much in this cold land, with strange new plants and unfertile soil. This meant that the population centers the Khitan conquered had to be left alone--and so too the men, in the main.

After the eighteenth Khitan man found dead in a ditch, Agdji grew understandably furious at the natives. Once again showing his innovativeness, instead of wasting more Khitan lives, Agdji ordered the creation of a band of “holy warriors,” recognized by the Pope and Patriarch as a Holy Order but de facto under the control of the Huangdi alone, to be made up of various castoff Qipchaq, Turkmen and Oghuz men, mainly drawn from the realm of Ilek Tunga Tatran, Agdji’s vassal to the south. In return for their service as a roaming band of warriors whose purpose was to eradicate any pagan troublemakers, they would be allowed to live as freemen within the Khitan heartland--a dispensation which, even if they followed Christ, Agdji did not intend to otherwise permit for any non-Khitan.

Within a month’s time, the Huangdi had selected the site of the great new Khitan capital, at a sheltered inlet on the coast which the locals referred to as Sambi. Among the Khitans it was called by the name by which Agdji had christened the entire region: Huangjin Zhongxin, the Golden Center.

The plans for a great city were drawn up practically from the moment that Agdji Huangdi chose the site of his new capital, but he did not concern himself with the deeds of his architects; he trusted that those the Qin had sent to him would be suitable. Instead, he focused on managing the beginning of the great migration.

With the capital and all of the Khitan records and administration to be moved from Tamatarkha to Huangjin Zhongxin, there were massive logistical concerns to overcome; the administration must be protected as it passed through the narrow territories which the Emperor had conquered to reach his new capital, for one. Yet more difficult still would be ensuring that, once in the new capital, the administrators could manage the migration of all of the hundreds of thousands of Khitan riders on the far-distant steppe.

Waystations were established linking Huangjin Zhongxin to Tamatarkha, which then ran through Sari-Su to Kashgar, in the furthest east. Aerlu’on was made governor of the new capital, with Yaerud An left in control at Tamatarkha to begin overseeing the migration. Within weeks, Agdji wished for the first riders not of the host to begin their settlement in Poland.

After the establishment of the waystations, it was not long before it was discovered that the situation was virtually untenable. The countryside was still untamed, and Lithuanian bandits--sometimes willingly hidden among resentful Polish families--conspired with the pagans of the east to murder any Khitan riding the roads. The narrow, winding passage from Huangjin Zhongxin through Plock and the Sandomierz corridor added over a week onto each messenger’s journey, and subjected them to the constant threat of bandit raids. What the Emperor had conquered was simply not yet secured--and, moreover, was likely not enough to hold all of the Khitans besides.

In an effort to secure a more direct path from the new Imperial capital to the Empire’s eastern holdings, as well as to please his new Christian benefactors and to secure additional land for the eventual Khitan settlement, Agdji began his final major campaign of the settlement process, seeking to push the borders of the nascent Khitan state east, as well as to link the liberated territories in Pinsk more cleanly to the remainder of the newly-conquered Khitan lands.

Of note during this campaign is the Khitan assault on the Russian Catholic lords of Chelm, the Gurielov. Once enthusiastic supporters of the Khitan arrival, the sudden influx of the nomads all around them had rapidly soured the Russian nobles, and they had taken to conspiring with the Lithuanians to waylay Khitan riders and discourage them from entirely surrounding the Chelm principality. Although Agdji had always intended to conquer the small territory, their duplicity in dealing with heathens was precisely the excuse which the Emperor needed to intervene and completely eliminate the independence of the region.

On the 16th of November, 1207, Agdji Huangdi determined that the conquest of the new Khitan homeland had been completed. Bounded by Pinsk in the east, Galich in the south, Gniezno in the west and the Huangjin Zhongxin in the north, the lands within these bounds were declared the Khitan patrimony, and none of Agdji’s riders but those who were considered Khitan in blood or upbringing were allowed within, on pain of death--The Lords of the Sky were alone exempt from this iron precept.

On the same day, the Emperor gave orders that his Irkin, his provincial governors, should begin the process of abandoning their governates, gathering their people into great hosts to be driven forth to the new homeland. The timing of the declarations could likely not have been worse.

Many historians argue to the present day whether or not Agdji realized what he was doing by issuing the dual proclamations, and whether or not he intended for what followed to occur. Distracted by ideas of Agdji as an all-powerful warlord and conqueror who constructed a great empire the breadth of the steppe, many historians simply miss the evident truth: that Agdji did not have the mind of a ruler, and never did. He did not foresee what was about to occur.

Indeed, Agdji Huangdi was almost lackadaisical in the months following the final ‘drive to the west.’ Thinking his great mission accomplished and giving thanks to his father Dashi for placing his faith in him to see it through, Agdji toured his new lands, hunted its game, saw to the birth of his daughter, and formally approved the plans for the construction of a great new capital. He spent gold lavishly, especially at Huangjin Zhongxin, to facilitate the construction of new granaries, barracks, walled hillforts and other instruments of Khitan rule.

When Yaerud An and other administrators begged Agdji to become involved in the governance of the new state during its momentous transition from a nomadic to settled society, Agdji was hesitant at best. He had no mind for such things, he believed, and was slow to make decisions. When he was roused or forced to make determinations, he also often made the wrong ones--when asked how the presence of Poles and Lithuanians in the territory was to be handled in light of his Khitan-only mandate within the new heartland, Agdji legislated the Poles into slavery to a man, for, according to him, “no free man can exist in this land who is not Khitan.” This almost caused a rebellion the breadth of the entire territory before the Emperor was forced to reverse the determination, making slavery to a Khitan man a punishment for crime rather than a default legal status. Such egregious missteps cost Agdji much of the goodwill which he had earned with the Poles within just a few years of being among them, and before many Khitans had even been settled in the territory. They also convinced Agdji that he could not effectively manage the realm, and he retreated back into disinterest.

Yet it would not be long until Agdji was finally roused from his torpor. The end of the Second Liao Empire was coming to pass.

Turburur Daudjil, son of Turburur Baisha-an, governor of the Trans-Volga territory. Rude, proud, and young, the most defining characteristic of Daudjil was his hatred of Agdji Huangdi. Sixteen years earlier, Daudjil’s father Baisha-an was murdered by his uncle Bi’en, and when the court of the Turburur begged Agdji Huangdi to avenge the death of Baisha-an, the Emperor refused. Daudjil had lived his whole life with the knowledge that his Emperor had turned on his house, and that, had not some petty Turk with a pitchfork slain his uncle in battle, Bi’en would still rule, and Daudjil would like-as-not have been drowned as a lad. Daudjil despised Yaerud Agdji--respected him, feared him, but despised him.

Luckily for Daudjil, Agdji Huangdi was a distant figure, always leagues away hunting, pillaging, or waging war. Even his agents, primarily Yaerud Aerlu’on and Yaerud An, were distant figures; for so long as Daudjil could enjoy the protections of being in the host of the greatest warlord on the steppe without ever being called to send away his forces to war, he was tolerant of being taxed by the Emperor.

But now he had been presented with an impossible prospect. The Emperor was no longer demanding taxes, the Emperor was demanding the utter forfeiture of his lands. He was to become a beggar, taking all of his people and all of his wealth and dragging them into a new land he did not know, and which he had no control over. Turkic filth would be given the grazing lands of his people to rule in their stead, while the Khitan eked out a meagre existence in the frigid hell that the Huangdi had carved out for them. And he, Daudjil, would be alone, without power, at Agdji Huangdi’s mercy.

For a long time, Daudjil weighed his options. But eventually, there was no more time to delay; eventually, too many of his people already had been forced to migrate west. A decision had to be made, and Turburur Daudjil was the first to make it.

On the 20th of February, 1209, Turburur Daudjil broke with Agdji son of Dashi, Huangdi of the Khitan, son of the Savior. Rather than losing his power and lands, Daudjil has chosen to declare himself Huangdi Daudjil, the new would-be Emperor of an independent trans-Volga governate, the seat of a new Khitan Empire. He calls for the other Irkin to swear loyalty to him, and to do away with the weak Khitan who have chosen to follow Agdji into “poverty and complacency.”

The move should not have been surprising. If Agdji had known any of his own governors well, he would have known that virtually none of them would be content to lose the freedom to which they had become accustomed, even in exchange for titles within the new Khitan state. Moreover, it would have been abundantly clear that Daudjil, of all of his Irkin, simply would not obey his order, especially not if the remnants who would occupy his lands were hated Turks. But herein lies Agdji’s failure: he did not know his vassals, and they did not know him.

Agdji, for all but everyone outside of his immediate family and 10,000-man host, was not a man--one did not know him, much less have a true personal relationship with him. Agdji was an idea: a vision of Khitan supremacy and might, larger than life and more powerful than God. But ideas, for all their power, are subject to reinterpretation. Agdji was an undeniable force, an overwhelming pressure that could demand ANYTHING of ANYONE, with no possibility of being denied… until he was. The moment that one of his own people summoned the immense courage required to refuse him, the façade of his invulnerability came crashing down, and behind it lay only an old man.

But Agdji did not at first think himself beaten. Full of righteous fury at the betrayal of the Turburur, Agdji sent the fastest horses to Tamatarkha to demand Yaerud An prepare for the arrival of the Khitan host, as the Emperor, Agdji the Younger and Ago once again set forth at the head of that 10,000-man band to crush Daudjil the would-be Huangdi into dust.

Yet not long after setting out, Agdji found himself face-to-face with a bedraggled An on the road to the south. The messenger had never reached him, for he had been slain on the bandit-infested roads. Even if he had, there would have been nowhere to reach. Tamatarkha had fallen weeks before to bandits who had roamed the royal demesne ever since it was emptied of Agdji’s personal herds and herdsmen in the effort to settle Poland. The leader of these bandits, rather than swearing fealty to Daudjil, had sacked Tamatarkha and seized its great wealth, then used the money to bribe the thousands of other bandits roaming the territory into acknowledging his right to rule. A new Khanate rose in Tamatarkha, with a new would-be Emperor: Huangdi Suni Chugung.

Claiming the right to rule all of the Khitan through his control of Tamatarkha, the new ‘Emperor’ has already set about prying the plaques from the Waypost of Agdji and tossing them into the Black Sea, to rewrite the history of the monument and refashion it as an artifact of his ‘Dynasty's victorious overthrow of the power of the tyrant Agdji.’

And with the loss of Tamatarkha, the most heavily-populated town lying between the Buh river and Kashgar, and the Khitan state's link to the east, the collapse begins in earnest.

“THEY DO NOT EVEN KNOW THE MEANING OF THE TITLE!” Agdji screamed. He was pacing as he ranted, spittle dripping from his lips and spattering his carefully-manicured beard. Few could remember a time when their Emperor was so beside himself--only those old men who were on campaign with the Huangdi when the Lady Purgyal betrayed him recalled such a day.

“THESE BASTARD-BORNS, THESE FILTH I RAISED UP AND MADE EVERYTHING,” the Emperor cried, “SEEK NOW TO TAKE FROM ME MY HONOR AND MY NAME, WHEN THEY KNOW NOTHING OF IT! What do they know of being Huangdi? NOTHING! They do not even know anything of the Middle Kingdom! They do not know our history, our struggle, the right MY LINE ALONE has to bear that sacred title! Do they not know of the Liao?! Do they not know my right name, Xuxing, son of Tianyou Wulie!? What has their mongrel blood, birthed on the thatch of barns to women copulating with dogs, earned but the scraps of the table of the LEAST of my blood?”

“Father…” Agdji the Younger began gently. The Huangdi turned to him in a rage, but the younger man stood his ground firmly, and the madness in the elder’s eyes dimmed ever so slightly. “Father, did you ever TELL them?”

And the madness left Agdji Huangdi’s eyes entirely. It was such a simple thing, a child would laugh at the idea of missing it… and yet, had he not overlooked it? Sons of the sons of men who had ridden with his father ruled now. Yet he had never met with them, to a man. He sent petty messengers to demand paltry payments of gold from men who otherwise never heard from their liege at all. Lands and hosts to themselves they had been, governors in name only, never united and ever-more independent. Did the Lady Huei not warn him of the perils of such? As he built monuments to the history of his House’s great struggle and thought his rule unassailable, his Irkin forgot that they had ever shared the struggle together.

At last, he finally understood. And Agdji Huangdi wept, because he knew already that it was too late.

The Tou were next, unsurprisingly. Hostile to Agdji ever since his overthrow of the short-lived Chu Empire, the only other lords that could even begin to claim the right to wear the title of Huangdi were among the few not to claim it. Their rebellion was not even related to the declaration of independence of the Turburur, for they had not received word of it yet; the Tou were simply responding to the order of Agdji Huangdi to vacate the steppe. Confident that the Khitan would soon be gone, Tou Hsiu-to, son of Xianzu Huangdi, murdered at Agdji’s hand, felt the time was ripe to finally be free of the Khitan yoke. Concerned at the possibility that Agdji might re-invade if they reclaimed their Imperial title, Hsiu-to restrained himself to naming himself Lord of Tibet, but it was a declaration of independence nevertheless--one which Hsiu-to’s wife, Agdji’s daughter the Lady Paudun, could not at all dissuade him from.

Of course, this is not to say that all of Agdji Huangdi’s many vassals and riders turned their coats; it would have been almost as difficult to turn Sugr Daerqa against the Emperor as stopping the sun from rising in the morning. The son of Ituk, one of the fiercest loyalists to Agdji Huangdi, Sugr had lived all his life at Agdji’s side, and considered him not only his liege but his greatest and closest friend. Sugr’s people, the Uighurs, owed Agdji and the Liao everything from their lands to their prosperity, and were willing to die to a man at his call. Moreover, Sugr was married to Agdji’s daughter Arel, and the Lord Daerqa’s sister, Sura, had been the wife to Yaerud Aerlu’on prior to her untimely death due to a weak constitution; the two dynasties were bound in blood, and it was impossible to mistake their close connection.

In the years to come, a phrase was birthed in the valleys of Kucha that captured the spirit of the Uighur people in that time: “If this land was still called Ordukand, we would not know Agdji Huangdi’s name. But while it is called Kashgar, it is not possible to forget our Emperor.”

Sugr was deeply alarmed by the collapse of Agdji’s empire in the west, and sought to lead a band of loyal Uighurs out onto the steppe--to abandon his people entirely, if need be--to find and fight beside Agdji Huangdi in his hour of need.

The preparations for his travel were almost completed when before him rose the host of the Lord of Kashmir, Shulu Cha II, bedecked in gold and finery befitting one who had named himself Huangdi.

As Cha approached the gates of Kucha, he found the walls fully manned and soldiers arrayed in neat lines before the town gate. Sugr was prepared to do battle with him, and lose his people to a man if he had to, to protect the honor of Agdji Huangdi.

Lord Shulu begged parley, and reluctantly Sugr sallied out with a small force to meet him. On the field before Kucha, the homely Lord Daerqa faced off against the gold-bedecked and silk-clad figure of Shulu--and was surprised.

“Lord Daerqa,” Cha nodded his head courteously. “I understand your concern, and the gathering of your men. I have no ill intent toward you. I have taken the mantle of Regent for Agdji Huangdi in the east, in this time of chaos. I beg you, my Lord: help me to reach my liege.”

Sugr Daera, it seems, was not alone in his memory of debts owed.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the Shulu remembered the struggle of the Khitan better than their eastern counterparts, due to their proximity to the Middle Kingdom. Yet there was more to their loyalty than just memory: the Shulu were the first Irkin to be raised up by Agdji Huangdi; they were given the honor of personally guarding the eastern capital at Kashgar, the site of Agdji’s great victory; and Agdji Huangdi had done Cha great honor by taking his daughter as one of his brides. Cha was also the only governor whom Agdji had a relationship with, as they had often hunted together. Yet the Shulu would have remained loyal even if Agdji had been distant--they had sworn a blood oath of fealty to the Yaerud the day that they were raised to Irkin, and although all Irkin had sworn the same oath and some were already betraying it, the Shulu alone took that oath seriously. They stood loyal.

So it was that, although Cha claimed the powers of an Emperor, he did so only as regent to Agdji in the rebellious east. Sugr agreed to provide him with the full help of all the Uighur people to commence his flight to the west, and war with the Seljuk was declared within a few short months. With it came the beginnings of the second great Khitan anabasis.

Unfortunately, the loyalty of the Shulu came at a cost. As much as they honored and were loyal to the Huangdi, the Miguniai were equally mistrustful and spiteful towards the Shulu. Although Cha begged Miguniai Gu--who like Cha was a warden of the east and remembered well the struggles of the Khitan--to join with him and fight west to their liege, Gu refused to subsume himself to the Shulu. Although his declaration of independence was tinged with elements of shame and qualification, before the end of March Miguniai Gu declared that, “unless Agdji Huangdi should reappear and prove he is alive,” the Miguniai would “assume his death, and that the behavior of the Shulu is but a base grab at power.” He styled himself as the one Irkin who retained the full memory of Agdji Huangdi through his control of the monument to Dashi, and declared himself not a new Empire, but a continuation of the Liao.

The Turburur were but haughty children that did not know the meaning of what they had claimed; “Emperor” Suni was but a puffed-up bandit thinking himself mighty; the Tibetan Kingdom of the Tou was on the extreme of the Khitan periphery, yet understood well enough that claiming the title of Emperor was perilous; and, although the Shulu claimed the powers of the Emperor, they claimed it only in service to the true Huangdi: they did not claim to be Emperors themselves. Of all the rebellious governors, Miguniai Gu alone knew what he was doing well enough not only to know the meaning of his title, but to know the extent of his blasphemy in claiming to be the legitimate continuation of the Da Liao. When Agdji Huangdi eventually learned of his declaration, it’s said that he called down a great scourge: that a “roiling tide of death” take the Miguniai, and everyone else who betrayed him.

Although by the beginning of April all of his Khitan Irkin had betrayed him save the Shulu, his personal lands along the Black Sea had been occupied by an upstart, and Tibet had declared itself independent, Agdji heard little of this news. He knew only that the Turburur had declared their independence, and that Tamatarkha had fallen to bandits. Although he understood that the Khitan state was dissolving and that it could not be saved as it currently was, Agdji did not understand the extent to which it had already unraveled; he firmly believed that, if he rode east with all haste, it could be reunited through force. Since encountering Yaerud An on the road, Agdji had delayed only long enough to escort him safely through the lands of Irkin Tunga Tatran, and to send rapid riders to the bandits at Tamatarkha to demand their surrender, on pain of wholesale execution--the Huangdi intended to turn his army as one and strike out east in the name of eradicating all those who had betrayed the Liao.

Yet the roads were perilous. Precious little land was actually controlled by Agdji Huangdi, with over half of what was ostensibly his remaining territory actually in the hands of Tunga, his last loyal Irkin. Yet Tunga was not a Khitan, and the lands he now ruled had been conquered from him by force.

To historians, it is no surprise that Tunga Tatran declared his independence and raised himself up as Khan. What reason did he have to remain loyal to Agdji? He was not a Khitan, and Agdji’s struggles were not his own. He had been kept in power by Agdji, but that was not a blessing, it was simply Agdji tolerating his presence after having conquered him; Tunga did not serve him of his own will, after all, but by the sword. During his brief reign as a governor Tunga had never been made to feel equal among the other Irkin, even though he was given the most critical task of all of them, defending the passes from the eastern Empire to the new heartland in the west. Indeed, he and all of his family were actually barred by Agdji’s decree from even entering the Khitan heartland! As a vigorous, skilled and ambitious man, as soon as Tunga received word that the rest of the Empire had rebelled from Agdji, it was all but a given that he would declare his right to freedom.

To Agdji, however, it was a total blindside. He, the Destroyer, who had eradicated so many peoples that the steppe seemed a monolith of Khitan blood alone from their absence, had for the first time spared a ruler and his people. Tatran had been given power, riches, and control of fertile lands; he had even been honored with safeguarding the Mountain of Dreams! Tunga Tatran had been honored above all of the other Irkin simply by being allowed to live, much less being granted the many honors of his rule!

Upon receiving the news, Agdji stood and coldly beckoned his sons to him. “The experiment in harmony is over,” he told them. “Though we stayed our hand for a time, we are death, and it is all we ever were. We will wash away the shame of our betrayal in blood, as we always have.”

If Tatran’s betrayal was not surprising to historians, neither was Agdji Huangdi’s response to it, or the outcome of that response. Of course the would-be Khan would rebel--the rest of the Yaerud empire was collapsing, and this would be his best chance to achieve independence. And as the Destroyer, of course Agdji would completely crush the nascent rebellion. For so long as Agdji was willing to fight, the chances of any small realm like Tatran’s surviving his ire was nonexistent.

Although the Emperor had claimed that the two years spent pillaging prior to the invasion of Poland was to be the end of Khitan brutality, he did not anticipate the rebellion of his Irkin. In his fury, the response to Tatran’s betrayal, and especially his attempt to withhold the Mountain of Dreams from the Khitan, was unspeakable. Although the Russian populace of Galich was untouched, any Turkic settlements in the region were simply eradicated--no slaves were taken, no women stolen as concubines, no children adopted. It was the first, and only, time that Agdji resorted to an intentional and total eradication of a specific people, with no quarter given or slaves taken. The Buh river was choked with bodies, blood and ash from the burning not just of the region’s settlements, but also its fields. The move was explicitly genocidal: Agdji’s court chroniclers wrote that the Emperor spoke constantly of “ravaging the Turkic plains until there is nothing left, and no room for anything to ever return.”

Unlike Agdji's actions in Anatolia, the Scouring of Turks could not be hidden from Christian observers. They knew the extremes to which Agdji went in his campaign, but largely absolved him due to his betrayal by his vassals, and the Khitan court's claims that Tunga Tatran had turned heretic. Nevertheless, the brutality of the campaign, even heard thirdhand as it was in most Christian realms, was the beginning of a long end to the honeymoon period of the Khitan in Europe. While it was undeniable they were apex warriors and honorable neighbors, they were slowly being acknowledged as barbaric and brutal to their enemies in a way which was obscured at Galich.

After re-occupying the northern marches and restoring control over the Mountain of Dreams, Agdji and the host turned south, to deal with the traitor himself. The pitiful armies arrayed against the Huangdi were easily swept away, and Tunga began to sweat as the Emperor’s forces reached Yedisan. Emissaries were sent with word of his surrender, begging for leniency, but they were slain. And Agdji, in his blind fury, slowly circled, eradicating village after village, fortification after fortification, gradually eliminating the entire population of the territory as he drew ever closer to the Khan’s settlement

Finally, in early September, the Emperor’s army arrived in Yedisan. The Turks therein knew that they would receive no mercy, and so they fought ferociously. But there was never a chance of their victory; the small tribal town was rapidly overrun by the Khitan, and any therein were trampled under the hooves of their horses. “Khan” Tunga Tatran was quickly found and dragged before Agdji Huangdi, made to witness the utter eradication of his people.

Before his jaw was cut from his head and he was subjected to the same cruel tortures which saw to the death of Caliph al-Hakim, Tunga Tatran managed to say but one thing to the Emperor: “Your victory is no victory at all. Your empire is lost; all the Irkin have rebelled. You have tried to grasp it too tightly, old man. It's all slipped away.”

Although the Emperor did not at first believe the words of the traitor-Khan, his scribes soon found missives in the Khan’s great yurt--intended for Agdji but traitorously withheld by Tunga prior to his rebellion--that confirmed exactly what he claimed. In fact, the picture presented to Agdji Huangdi was more grim than the reality, for the only news of the Shulu had been provided by Miguniai Gu, who claimed that they were unjustly claiming the rights of the Yaerud. Everything indicated that the entire Empire had rebelled against Agdji, and that no loyalists of any note remained. The fate of the Lords Daerqa was unknown, but presumed grim.

The Emperor’s plans changed entirely upon hearing the revelation. The Huangdi had previously believed that he had made serious mistakes, but rectifiable ones; now, it was clear that the mistakes that he had made were terminal, perhaps even imminently mortal, and that it would take an expenditure of effort perhaps equal to the entire struggle to create his empire in order to recapture it. It was not even clear that it could be done.

This news sent the entire Yaerud royal line spiraling into great depression and despondency; at the moment of their triumph, was it their fate to have their victory stolen from them? Agdji proved indecisive for the first time in his life, and it was not immediately clear what the host would do. The Emperor did not even take joy in the torture of Tunga, and gave orders that the would-be Khan should be quickly executed following the torture regimen, rather than left to suffer as al-Hakim had been.

Agdji even permitted Tunga’s brother to “rule” the territory as a Khitan tributary as the host furtively trekked back north, to an uncertain future. Although Agdji had enough spirit in him to note to the man that he ruled “a realm devoid of life and hope,” he did not kill him, or eradicate the last stragglers Chagri had been able to gather together. The flame in the Huangdi had gone out.

Distraught by the news of his governors’ betrayal and uncertain of how to proceed, Agdji drove the host back to the Mountain of Dreams, where he hoped to gain insight in the spiritual presence of his father. But Agdji’s time at the mountain reminded him only ever-more of his failure. Dashi had entrusted the Khitan people to him, and he had become unparalleled in war in order to honor that trust, and to strengthen the Khitan for the future. Yet he had utterly failed to capitalize on his rule, learning only how to conquer and not to govern. And now he had lost all but everything that he had gained.

As the hours passed, Agdji became more and more certain that there was no way to reclaim what was lost save to return to the steppe, waging an ever-expanding war with all of his various vassals, eradicating the traitors and gradually reconquering the old Empire and its people. Yet there was no longer a strong population base of Khitan from which to gather troops; the men that Agdji had taken to Poland were already in the process of settling and the majority could not simply return to a nomadic life. Agdji was thus faced with the prospect of returning to the steppe with naught to his name but his host and no support to speak of, or remaining in the pitiful realm he now called his home, allowing the vast majority of the Khitan people to break their oaths and forget their rightful place under the Yaerud. It was an impossible decision, for neither was acceptable.

It did not take long for Agdji, already under months of strain over the Turburur rebellion and now reeling from his complete failure--something he had never experienced before--to contemplate suicide as the only way out. He could not make a choice; there was no possible choice, no way to win. Only by killing himself could he wipe away his dishonor, free his sons to act as they must, and save himself from his shame. He would do anything to wipe away the pain of knowing that he had failed Father Khitan

It was in this despondent state that the Lady Huei found the Huangdi.

Agdji’s children did not see the threat the current situation posed to their father, as wrapped up in their own concerns as they were. Moreover, Agdji and Ago in particular could not conceive of their father falling into exactly the sort of mental state he had; they had always witnessed the great warrior-Emperor in total control. They were deeply depressed at the time and effort they had wasted in the conquest of the Empire only to lose it, but Agdji’s sons viewed it as a foregone conclusion that they would sally forth to reconquer their losses. For Agdji, he had lost confidence it could even be done, and this, Huei knew, could break the man. The warlord who has never known defeat is at his weakest the first time he tastes it, and this becomes truer still the older the man is when that first defeat comes. At sixty-five, Agdji was old indeed to suffer his first great failure.

And so, in the quiet of night, she went to him to offer her advice, as she had over fifteen years before.

When Agdji heard her slip into his yurt, his eyes widened, and he spat at her feet. “Have you come to gloat, whor* from the east?” he rasped. His voice was hoarse, and his anger was a pitiful façade to hide his reddened eyes--the Huangdi had been weeping.

“I did not gloat when I advised you previously,” Huei replied diplomatically, “and I will not gloat now. Though if I am to be called a whor*, you will be reminded that it was you who chose to beg for my hand for your son.”

“It is not the first mistake I’ve made,” Agdji replied. His voice dripped with self-pity, and his anger at her, Huei permitted herself to think, was the first time that she had seen Agdji as something other than powerful.

“You are pathetic,” she told him bluntly.

The old man’s eyes all but popped from their head. Still strong and spry, Agdji jumped to his feet and withdrew a dagger from its sheathe at his belt. “YOU DARE INSULT YOUR EMPEROR?” he cried.

“I dare insult only a man who has shown himself to be pitiful,” Huei replied, her hands balled into fists. Her own anger, slow to burn but like the fire of the Greeks when ignited, had risen in her, and she found her voice rising with every syllable, just as it had the last time she sought to provide him advice.

“An old, pathetic man, the lesser son of a greater father, he who lost everything in the Middle Kingdom and still had the honor, wisdom and dignity to save his people at all costs, in a flight more dire and deadly than any YOU have ever experienced! I insult the ill-begotten son of that father, the child who has been given everything from the day he was born, who has proven himself adept in everything he attempts, and now, after a lifetime of success, considers the cowardice of the knife at his first great failure! I insult the ungrateful child of that generous father who, having lost a kingdom of horses and weeds, a stable full of manure compared to the majesty of what his noble and generous sire left behind with no complaint, contemplates throwing away everything he has earned, everything his father wanted him to accomplish, at the very moment of his triumph, all because his honor has been pricked! I insult the petulant child who, even now,” she cried, pointing at the knife in Agdji’s trembling hand, “seeks to resort to violence at the first opportunity, as his first and only solution! My entire time with your people, all I have ever heard of you is your love for your father. And so I ask you, Yaerud Agdji: did you learn even a single thing from him, or has the memory of him entirely left you?”

The yurt was utterly silent. Huei had screamed at the top of her lungs, and her voice was hoarse and throat painful from it. That the guards outside the yurt had heard her tirade was without question; that Agdji’s honor had been given the greatest affront could likewise not be denied.

Huei was not vindictive. Aside from her single previous visit to Agdji’s yurt to offer her opinion, she had never stepped out of line, or offered any insult to the Liao. She had taken her Dynasty’s alliance incredibly seriously, and had behaved chastely, loyally, and honorably her entire time with the host. It was this reputation--and, more than anything, her honesty--which saved her. Because her angle of attack was perfect.

Agdji dropped his knife from his trembling fingers, and although he sputtered and sought to cry out, his words were choked with tears. He managed to yell out a pathetic “Begone!”, but Huei did not obey him. Agdji collapsed into a sobbing pile on the delicately embroidered pillows beneath him, shielding his face with his hands so that she might not see him in such a state. Yet Huei approached him, knelt down at his side, and rubbed his back.

Though she had just insulted him so gravely, at that moment, Huei was the first woman in sixty years to treat Agdji truly gently.

“You have struggled to fulfill your father’s wish,” Huei soothed softly, “and you have succeeded. The failure you face now is the rebellion of the weakest among you that seek, at the end, to save their power at all costs. To allow such poison into the Liao would have destroyed everything. You have not failed, Agdji Huangdi. You have done the impossible: you have given succor to your people, you have brought them across the entire vastness of the steppe, and you have preserved their culture. You even caused the lords of this land to welcome you openly. That you did not save them all is your only failure, and not even Dashi would have believed that possible. All I ask, in the name of your grandsons, is that you do not throw away what the Christians have offered you. You have already fulfilled Dashi’s Dream; do not allow yourself to be drawn back to the steppe. Like your father before you, become a better man. Leave behind what you were not meant to hold.”

As before, Huei’s words had a profound effect. Agdji had been humiliated, but rightly so: he was behaving petulantly. Compared to the sacrifices of his father, what he was being asked to suffer was a pittance. If the price to pay for the security of the Khitan was humility, Agdji found that he was willing to pay that price.

Agdji’s rather flat speech at the beginning of the conquest was forgettable, and indeed has been entirely lost to history--it was the speech of a conqueror at the precipice of violence, a tone which was incompatible, in the end, with the goal of the Khitan in coming to Europe to begin with. His speech to his men the day after the greatest defeat he would ever suffer, conversely, became the stuff of legend: the cornerstone of the foundation myth of the Khitan kingdoms in the west.

“Gathered here before the mountain of my father’s dreams, assembled with spears at the ready, you, my brothers, no doubt expect that we will turn east: to blood, death and revenge against the betrayals which have been perpetrated against us. And why would we not? Have we not been dishonored to our very core, to have those saved by my father and empowered by my own hand callously betray us at the moment of our triumph?

“We have. But we will not turn against them. Not because we are better men--less violent, more civilized, humbler. But because we will try to be. We will grow, in wealth and in wisdom; the traitors will be doomed to roam the steppe for as long as their pitiful realms last, eking out a meagre existence, forgetting the glory and culture which we have preserved, bereft of the opportunity to change. Here, in this golden state, we will restore the laws and customs of rule which are our true birthright; here, we will live in peace and security, sheltered and sheltering in turn. Pity those who rebelled--but do not look back. We are home.”

And saying this, Agdji ordered one final, symbolic act: he ordered the men of his host to strike their spears into the ground before the Mountain of Dreams, completely disbanding the army which he had relied upon his entire reign. One hundred rows one hundred deep, the inverted spears of Agdji’s host, a homage to the memory of a past forsaken on behalf of a future uncertain, would become immortalized in Khitan legend.

Chapter 10: The Bringer of Change, Pt. IX - Jin Khidan Zhou

Chapter Text

This is not to say that all of Agdji’s men chose to forsake battle. Many of them were lifelong soldiers; some were as old as Agdji himself was, or nearly so, and knew nothing else. They felt it was too late to turn to a settled life, and begged their Emperor to give them over to some task that could make use of their skills in riding.

It did not take Agdji long to find a calling for them. Following Huei’s advice, the Huangdi ordered that these last riders should ride east, to the old Khitan lands. For, though Agdji had abandoned the idea of reconquering his Empire, he had not abandoned the idea of reclaiming the people within. Many Khitan, he was sure, were not aware that their rulers had betrayed him, and perhaps did not even know that they were now bereft of the protection of the great Khitan host. In the roiling mass of the east, where the new rulers were already in the process of turning on one another, Agdji was confident that his stable rule could still be a beacon to any loyal Khitan that remained.

And so the Emperor charged his riders to spread a simple but clear message: Agdji lived. He had been betrayed, but he ruled now in the west. He had abandoned the east, and would protect none who resided there any longer--indeed, he was to declare them pagans to the Pope and Patriarch. Anyone who was loyal should turn toward Huangjin Zhongxin; any who crave death, at the hand of the Muslims or furious Christians, could remain. And, most critically of all, any so-called Khitan who resided outside the realm of Agdji Huangdi following his death should not be considered a Khitan at all, but a slave.

This news would lead to massive unrest and terror in the east, as the pastoralists who had naively supported the rebel Irkin at the beginning of their reigns would abandon them in droves in search of the stability of Agdji’s realm. The east would soon bleed tens of thousands of Khitan a year, all marching to Poland. The ramifications were to be incalculable.

Later the same day, as the ex-soldiers of the Khitan host bid a final farewell to their Emperor and began dispersing to the lands which they had been granted, Agdji changed the formal name of his people--what most historians would later identify as the moment at which the Khitans finally and firmly committed to settlement.

Although the remnants of the Yaerud clan had always considered themselves as a legitimate continuation of the Liao Dynasty and perpetuated all of its claims, there was a significant difference between the Liao as a Dynasty and the way that the Khitans referenced themselves, and were referred to in turn. Outside of the Middle Kingdom, at least during Agdji’s reign, the title of ‘Da Liao,’ the formal title of the Khitan rulership in the Middle Kingdom and during Dashi’s reign, was relatively rarely used. The Khitan were instead usually referred to as some equivalency of the Khitans’ own Huldji Qidai Gur: the Great Khitan Host.

After the Parting of the Spears, Agdji gave orders that a new title was to be propagated: Jin Khidan Zhou, meaning Golden Khitan State (or Realm) in the language of the Middle Kingdom. It was the first step in the long process of transitioning the Khitan from a culture of brutal warriors, as Agdji had forged them to be, back into a civilized and prosperous people. The change in reference was an indication by the Huangdi that he understood that the time had come for the Khitan to begin their long process of change, as Dashi had foretold.

It was also the point at which the Khitans first gained an acceptable “royal title,” as Europeans understood the concept: no less than the Pope would soon issue to Agdji Huangdi congratulations for and confirmation of the proclamation of the “Kingdom of the Golden Khitans.”

Historiography and matters of prestige, so often at odds, in this case for once align perfectly. The end of the Second Khitan Empire is dated to the rebellion of Turburur Daudjil on the 20th of February 1209, but historiography marks the date of the proclamation of the Jin Khidan Zhou, the 3rd of September 1209, as the beginning of the Third Liao Empire, an empire of settled men, with Agdji Huangdi as its first Emperor.

Between the final conquest of Poland and the betrayal of the Irkin, Agdji had been apathetic about dividing his new territories into firm fiefdoms, preferring to rule in an abstract manner through the use of local representatives answerable only to himself, as he had on the steppe. Yet the betrayal of the Irkin changed Agdji’s view significantly, and it soon became clear that it would not be possible to rule all of these lands as a single man, raising and smashing his governors as he wished. A more stable system of rule had to be instituted, one where he as Emperor had the legal and military authority to hold his servants to certain basic standards.

The model that was adopted was based both on exigency and practicality. Although Agdji would have preferred to demand total obedience of his vassals, the reality of the situation did not allow for it. In a realm which was once meant to be settled by 400,000 Khitans, scarcely 175,000 had come. The Khitan were significantly outnumbered by the Poles, Lithuanians and Russians which made up the majority of their territory, and even if all positions of any practical power were centralized in Khitan hands, it was still nothing more than a ruling elite marginalizing a weakened underclass. Even as unskilled in administration as he was, Agdji understood that demanding total obedience from his vassals would mean that all the blame from their actions would be transferred from them to himself as the ultimate authority in the realm, and a rebellion against Yaerud rule could very easily rise from such ire. Was that not exactly how they were forced out of the Middle Kingdom?

Agdji therefore chose a different path. Naming Agdji the Younger his general factotum and Lord of Prusa, the Huangdi charged his son and heir with the creation of a governing structure which was mighty, but flexible enough to withstand the challenges it would undoubtedly face.

Historians--and even some contemporaries--often argued that Agdji Huangdi’s decision to make Agdji the Younger his general factotum, as well as giving him the most powerful fief in the realm and completely surrounding his own small holdings in Huangjin Zhongxin with his son’s lands, was but a thinly-veiled attempt to empower Huei. That she was a woman and yet was now regularly granted audiences to discuss policy matters was shocking to the Khitan elite, and many whispered that it was a sign of Agdji’s enfeeblement--first the loss of the east, and now an unmanly willingness to adhere to the wishes of a Han bitch… many of Agdji’s faults, both real and perceived, were laid at her feet.

Although the Khitan were traditionally an egalitarian culture, decades of Agdji's misogyny and systemic exclusion of women from the host had brought about similar ways of thinking in his riders, and Agdji's sudden about-face and respect for Huei seemed unmanly and feeble to the highly masculine culture of the host which Agdji had cultivated.

Yet although Agdji had grown to deeply respect Huei’s advice, especially on administrative matters, that was not why he empowered Agdji the Younger, nor why he landed him so closely to the capital. In reality, it was simple political exigency: when the Huangdi eventually perished, his chosen heir would be the ruler closest to the capital, and the one who could most quickly occupy it. Similarly, Ago was empowered to rule in the lands the Poles called Mazowsze as a matter of security: if a general uprising did take place, Agdji’s two best generals, the only full-blooded brothers among his children, and first two choices of heirs would be the forces positioned closest to the capital.

Of course, the landing of Agdji the Younger and Ago both also signaled quite clearly the intended structure of the realm, one which Agdji the Younger pioneered: a Khitan ruling class which was almost entirely based upon the family of the Yaerud, or those with blood ties to them. The Jin Khidan Zhou would begin as a decentralized state, but all of its many vassals would be bound closely to the current Huangdi, to reduce the chances of rebellion.

These ties did not need to be particularly close, because Agdji and his sons well-remembered the deeds of those families who had helped in their exile, and they were duly rewarded.

Siau Uldjin, son of Siau Uldjin, son of Siau Uldjin, son of Siau Labu who was brother to Siau Mosa, who was father to Siau Tabuyen, was the last remaining scion of the Siau family. A cousin impossibly removed from Siau Tabuyen, nevertheless Uldjin had already been significantly rewarded by the Yaerud: his father, Siau Uldjin the Younger, was born to Agdji Huangdi’s eldest sister Ordelhan, and indeed he himself was given birth by Agdji’s eldest daughter, also Ordelhan. The Siau had been consistently rewarded with the most prestigious marriages the Yaerud could honor them with in return for their loyalty in the great anabasis.

It was thus of little surprise that Agdji the Younger chose to fully ennoble the Siau in the Jin Khidan Zhou, granting them the title of Gniezno and naming them Warden of Wielkopolska, a guard against the power of the duchy of the same name to the west. Wielkopolska was held by Branimir Gryfita, the heir presumptive to the Kingdom of Poland, and it was expected that he might attempt to launch a strike to the east to recover parts of his patrimony--it was to be the duty of the Siau to be the first line of defense.

Similarly titled was Asalup Daerqa, youngest son of Sugr.

Although the Yaerud believed that Sugr and his family had likely perished in the east fighting in the name of the Yaerud, not all was lost: Agdji had been ward to Asalup at Sugr’s request, and when the empire broke apart Asalup was kept safe in the Jin Khidan Zhou. As who the Yaerud believed was likely the last living scion of Ituk, Asalup was given a great honor by being landed closest to Huangjin Zhongxin of all the Yaerud vassals not specifically Agdji’s sons. In him alone, they believed, did the blood of their greatest allies and friends survive.

It is worth noting that Asalup also represented several other exceptions: he was not a Khitan, he was not a Christian (not even a syncretic Christian as many of the Khitan were), and he was not even an adult. In the society of the Jin Khidan Zhou, where the Khitan valued eldership and the society was stratified such that Khitans were explicitly socially placed above all other Christians and pagans were placed BELOW the Christians, landing such an unusual figure would have been met with significant resistance if it were anyone other than a Daerqa. As it was, despite what would normally be significant mitigating factors, as one of the new highest landholders of the Jin Khidan Zhou, Asalup became one of the high nobility of the new Khitan state.

Yaerud Sabon was another exception.

A distant descendant of Yaerud Taizu, the founder of the Liao Dynasty, Sabon was the heir presumptive to the title of Huangdi should Agdji and all of his line perish. Yet Sabon was fiercely loyal despite having refused to even convert to Tengrism, much less the syncretic Christianity that had come into vogue; he honored the memory of their people in the Middle Kingdom, and the example of Dashi as a Buddhist Huangdi.

Despite his theoretical risk to the Dynasty--he could claim to be another legitimate branch of the Liao--Sabon was honored and landed with significant fiefs on the border of Krakow for two reasons: his loyalty and his immense skill. Sabon was a mighty enough warrior that he made Ago’s skill at war look juvenile by comparison, and though both Agdjis dwarfed him in turn, he was still an incredibly able warrior. Agdji the Younger knew that, strategically, any invasion from Poland was likely to either pass through Prusa or the plains around Krakow--and thus, the Khitans’ best warrior was placed to intercept them.

Suni Urelbun, one of the commanders of Agdji’s personal guard, was given control of Sandomierz as one of the few nobles to be raised without any ties of blood to the Yaerud. Why Urelbun was landed is unclear to this day, but many historians argue that it was due to his advanced age, and the probability that he had overheard Huei's famous tirade against Agdji at the Mountain of Dreams, as one of the guardsmen posted at the Emperor’s yurt.

Although Huei's castigation of the Emperor is well-known in the present due to the recovery of records made by Huei herself during the reign of Agdji's successors, at the time there was no indication that the Khitan were aware of it. The grant of Sandomierz may have been intended to keep him quiet about what had been said, with the Huangdi confident that Urelbun would expire before he could produce any issue, allowing his lands to revert to the Emperor.

Agdji’s middle sons, Ituk and Dashi, were rewarded with somewhat nigg*rdly gifts that betrayed the Huangdi’s probable displeasure with them, for though Agdji the Younger organized the general structure of the vassalage of the realm, it was Agdji Huangdi who confirmed the grants of land.

Yaerud Ituk, the elder son, was given control of the Belz territory, but Yaerud Dashi, his still-juvenile younger brother, was given land directly adjacent to him and named “Lord of Belz,” making him Ituk’s direct liege.

Agdji’s displeasure with Ituk was self-evident: he had abandoned the host and ridden off as an adventurer the moment the struggle became too much for his squeamish constitution to bear, and had only returned, tail between his legs, when his men had either been wholly killed off due to his incompetence or deserted him. He was a son of the Emperor, but he was not trusted as Agdji’s other sons were.

As for Dashi, it’s unclear why he was treated with such little respect compared to his elder brothers, Agdji the Younger and Ago. It’s probable that, weak and shy, Dashi's youth and the fact that he had not ridden with the host as his eldest brothers had simply meant that Agdji did not know him, and had no desire to get to know him due to frustration that he did not see the specter of Dashi his father in the form of Dashi his son.

Khitan historiography has long wondered the extent to which Agdji was involved with his younger children, and as with so many others, this is a question which will likely never see a complete answer. Few men knew Agdji as well as his three eldest sons, the martial trio Aerlu'on, Agdji the Younger, and Ago; similarly, Agdji at least knew and communicated with the priestly Ituk. It was a similar, though not identical, story with Agdji's daughters: of his five eldest girls--Ordelhan, Arel, Yash, Paudun and Telbe, all of whom were older than Ituk--Agdji was known to have had close relationships with Ordelhan, Arel and especially Telbe. But when one gets to Dashi, there is barely any textual evidence that Agdji ever even SAW Dashi more than a few dozen times, much less raised him or treated him as a son, and the evidence of Agdji's involvement with his other children Dashi's junior are--barring one great exception--even more scant. Is this a flaw of sources, or does it suggest that Dashi was the first of Agdji's children that, in his old age, he began to ignore?

The next landed dynasty was by far the most shocking. Purgyal Trimang, brother of Purgyal Kyi, the sacrificed ex-wife of Agdji Huangdi and heir to the Kingdom of Tibet, was made Lord of the Volyn.

It’s rumored that harsh words were exchanged between Agdji and his heir over the decision. The Huangdi wished to do everything possible to forbid it, but, for once, Agdji the Younger stood up to him.

“We have taken from them everything,” Agdji’s son said, “and given them nothing in return. You took their daughter’s hand and killed her. I don’t fault you--you know I never will. It was the right decision; she was a traitor. But they lost our support, then they lost their realm to the Han invaders, and we did nothing to protect them. And now all that they are is a pitiful group of refugees, fleeing a kingdom which they’ve now lost twice-over. We owe them this, father.”

“We owe them nothing,” the Emperor scoffed. “Did I not give them the great artifacts of the Buddha when I came to my rule? Was Trimang not given my sister Harur as wife? And then their beloved daughter sought to kill one of my own blood! Any debt that I owed them I have repaid; if any debt still exists, it is a debt they have to us. The suffering they have, they have earned.”

“Father,” Agdji the Younger said slowly, “whether you like to admit it or not, I am of their blood. I am half Tibetan. Trimang is my uncle, and he has been greatly wronged. They deserve this.”

It’s said that the Emperor looked at his son for a very long time, quietly, before eventually turning from him and simply saying “do as you will.” It was the first time that Agdji Huangdi gave over to a demand from any of his children--but it was also the first time any of his children had ever dared demand something of him.

Toqsoba, Agdji’s youngest son and bastard child, was named Lord of Pinsk. Although for the moment Toqsoba only controlled the city of Pinsk itself, as well as its marshy surrounds, it was clear that, in this case, both Agdjis viewed Toqsoba’s rightful territory as the entire Russian principality, and they granted his title with the territories of Sluck and Turov in mind.

Although the Khitans viewed Toqsoba as legitimate, due to the Christian Church hierarchy’s refusal to do the same, technically the landing of the lad presented a danger to the ruling dynasty, as the Christians viewed him as a member of a cadet house. But none of the Yaerud saw Toqsoba as such; he was simply a son of Agdji, and that was that.

The final grant of land went to Yaerud Djoborin, Agdji’s penultimate son, he who was born just after the Conclave legitimized the right of the Khitan to settle in Europe. The “child of prophesy” he was called, the realization of Dashi’s decree that the Khitans would become what they were meant to be when they ‘passed beyond the Mountain of Dreams.’ His incredible skills even as a young child were pointed to as evidence of this, and both Agdjis came to agreement that Djoborin should rule in Galich, over the Mountain of Dreams which heralded his birth. The decision was to have immense, far-reaching consequences. Although only a child at the time he was enfeoffed, Djoborin, who by his skills alone was a serious contender to the throne who could easily challenge Agdji the Younger’s sons for the right to rule, was handed one of the most prestigious and symbolic territories in the entirety of the Jin Khidan Zhou. Agdji the Younger had thought to weaken his little brother’s claim by moving him so far to the south, away from the seat of power at Huangjin Zhonxin--but giving him ownership of the Mountain of Dreams would prove to be a significant mistake.

Throughout the entire process of landing the various lords and relatives of the Yaerud, one Yaerud was consistently passed over: Aerlu’on, Agdji’s eldest child.

Aerlu’on’s relationship with his father had never been worse than cordial, but it had also rarely been warmer: he had always been a shy lad who had been hesitant to fight, and even in their extreme youth, his younger brother Agdji had all but always stolen the show from him. As he grew up Agdji’s eldest son showed skill in war, but never so much as his two half-brothers Agdji and Ago, the sons of Purgyal Kyi. By the time Ago came of age Aerlu’on was regularly passed over for leading the host, and although Agdji Huangdi trusted him more than Yaerud Ituk, who had abandoned the host, as the years passed he was left in administrative positions more and more, until eventually it became the norm for Aerlu'on not to ride with his father.

Without a command, Aerlu’on would not ride to battle--a matter of pride, he claimed. Yet, warranted or not, this refusal to ride out soon became associated with a reputation of cowardice, the most fatal of all traits among the Khitan. With administrative matters already in the process of being shifted to a landed elite and a bureaucracy headed by Yaerud An and the Lady Huei, there was no clear need for Aerlu’on to run administrative affairs, and having a rumored coward in the royal family was an embarrassment. It was thus decided by Agdji Huangdi that Aerlu’on would be married off to a foreign court.

The match was to Maria von Groitsch, a powerful landholder in the Western Empire and granddaughter of Immo von Groitsch, its one-time ruler. It was a prestigious match, and one that did Aerlu’on honor--but it was still a dismissal.

To have struggled all his life to please his father only to be dismissed at the moment of Khitan triumph could not have been easy for Aerlu’on, but if it was hard, he made no complaint, nor was his leaving petty. He kowtowed before his Emperor, embraced his brothers, and left quietly, passing his branch of the dynasty on to history. The two houses would be reunited before long, though Aerlu'on would not see his father or his siblings again in life.

Huangjin Zhongxin was the capital of the Jin Khidan Zhou because Agdji Huangdi declared it to be, not because it was already a seat worthy of rule. Although it had many features, both natural and manmade, which contributed to its future worth as a great capital--the river Pregel ran through the territory, and indeed directly past the massive Teutonic fortification at Konigsberg (the one territory the Knights had managed to capture prior to being driven back into the sea), nigh to the Baltic ocean and its great capacity for trade--there was little which set it apart at the moment from any other territory on the Baltic: largely poor, with a semi-nomadic tribal populace and no actual boats with which to ply the Baltic trade for wealth.

This, in the view of both the Emperor and Huei, was dangerous--without Huangjin Zhongxin being the indisputable capital, any Yaerud ruler could declare themselves to be the rightful successor of Agdji upon his death and could cause a pointless civil war. To overcome this concern, a truly massive amount of wealth was invested into the new capital, creating a bustling city from what had once been somewhat swampy, midge-ridden marginal land. As the fortifications of Konigsberg were already constructed, Agdji ordered that its strong walls should form one spoke of the outer walls of the city, which would encompass a positively massive tract of land, within which would be built the Royal Palace.

In this new capital, the very center of the Khitan state, Agdji Huangdi ordered the massive palace complex to be raised in imitation of eastern style, to overawe foreign diplomats and make it clear that Huangjin Zhongxin alone was the true capital of the Jin Khidan Zhou. The investment was massive, representing almost a seventh of the entire wealth that the Khitans had taken from the east simply to plan and secure lands for the structure, and to pay the workers over the decades it would take to finish the palace would be another immense cost, and a punishing one due to the chaotic nature of rule in the Khitan state due to the recentness of their settlement, which sapped resources and prevented the full extension of taxation to the new Polish subjects. But in Agdji’s view it was worth it--to be Huangdi in truth, one must possess a seat worthy of song.

As often happened in these early days, with one hand Agdji’s chosen line of successors (from Agdji the Younger to his son Diluguin) propped themselves up, and with another they cut themselves down.

The great construction at Huangjin Zhongxin lent credence to the view that it was the true center of the Khitan state, and that whoever held it was the rightful ruler. But Agdji could not avoid giving honor to his father, and to his own decision to disband his war-host. In the south, he ordered a similarly massive construction, a great tomb complex constructed right over the grounds where the Khitan host had struck their spears in one hundred neat, orderly rows, within the shadow of the Mountain of Dreams. Within this great structure the Yaerud were to bury their dead, each of the Emperors at the head of one of the hundred rows of spears: a prediction of a dynasty that would last for an incalculable amount of time, one hundred full generations, unbroken and mighty.

The palace of Huangjin Zhongxin was thus taken as one center of Khitan rule, but the mausoleum complex at the base of the Mountain of Dreams was taken as another: the spiritual center of Khitan rule, housed within the realm of the Child of Prophesy, Djoborin, and located in the shadow of the Mountain of Dreams, the most sacred of all sites to the Khitan people. It was to be another misstep, another nod to Djoborin that he did not need, making it all the easier for the lad to claim the throne, should he wish.

But the day that Djoborin could claim the throne was far away, and indeed might never come. Dashi’s prophesy had been fulfilled--now it was time that Agdji’s was. Woe to traitors, woe to the Khitan.

Chapter 11: The Bringer of Change, Pt. X - Twilight

Chapter Text

Given the eventual fate of the Miguniai, historians dismiss that Agdji Huangdi said that a “rolling tide of death” would overcome them--the quote was simply too convenient, clearly the work of Khitan chroniclers attempting to add to Agdji's mythos. They would have been shocked to know that, in actuality, Agdji’s words were even more on the nose: he claimed that a “stampeding tide of horses will crush each of the traitors in turn to dust.” Agdji had, of course, meant that they would kill each other over their petty squabbles. In context, however, the claim seems properly prophetic, for less than five months after the proclamation of the Jin Khidan Zhou, the Mongols move.

The Mongols were a despicable people. During Dashi’s anabasis from the Middle Kingdom the Mongols had been aligned with the Jin state which had driven the Khitan out, and they had caused great loss of life among the host. When the Khitan finally reached safety Dashi had raided the Mongols ceaselessly, enough to pull them away from supporting the Jin, allowing the Qin to overcome them. When Agdji came to power and traveled to the Middle Kingtom to treat with the Qin Emperor, the two of them had agreed to fence the Mongols in as punishment for supporting the Jin, the enemies of both the Qin and Liao. So it came to pass that, for forty years, the Mongols were isolated to their own lands.

The Mongols hated the Khitan, rightly blaming them for the collapse of the Jin dynasty and the punishments the Qin inflicted upon them in their victory. But more than their hate, they were terrified: terrified of the rumor of the Destroyer, the unparalleled Liao Emperor who had crushed entire empires with no support from his tribesmen. For so long as Agdji ruled in the west, they were too petrified to use their carefully united power on any campaign, for fear of swift and overwhelming reprisal. But then word came that Agdji Huangdi had passed west and lain down his spear, leaving a half-dozen petty Khitan realms behind him.

And here the Genghis Khan, the all-ruler of the Mongols, saw that the time was ripe to exact his revenge upon the Khitan. And the Irkin realized, too late, what the loss of Agdji Huangdi’s protection meant for them.

Later historians would frequently argue that the rapid successes of the Mongols were predicated upon the deeds of Agdji himself. It was Agdji who first united the steppe under a single empire, wiping out cultures and ways of life along the way; Agdji who systematically raided the settled realms on the border of the steppe, grossly depopulating them of their peoples, sapping their wealth and wrecking their defenses; and Agdji who, at the point of the betrayal of his Irkin, permitted the empire to fracture--and, worse still, sent riders east to promulgate his edict of slavery for any Khitan who did not make their way to the Jin Khidan Zhou, thereby causing a mass exodus of Khitan men and women from the weakened governates. The collapse of the Second Khitan Empire took the already unstable patterns of nomadic life--patterns which had only been growing more unstable as the Khitan consumed more and more land--and systemically disrupted them across the entire steppe, even as the usurper-Emperors had begun the inevitable civil wars for control of the remnants of the Empire. In all, these historians argue, Agdji’s hugely damaging conquests, coupled with the collapse of 1209-1211, were simply so disruptive to the fabric of life and war on the steppe that it created a perfect storm wherein the Mongols could move with negligible resistance.

In reality, these historians undersell the Mongols significantly; although it’s true that Agdji Huangdi’s actions certainly made their conquests easier, the Mongol Genghis Khan was a mighty enough warrior--with mighty enough men in great enough number--that he could have carved out a great empire whether or not Agdji had entirely disrupted the steppe. Compared to Agdji this Temujin seems a young pup still, it’s true--but the Khan, with all of his men at his back, would have proved a challenge even for the skills of the Destroyer. It’s no surprise at all, then, that just over a year after his arrival the Genghis Khan had managed to destroy the Miguniai and force the loyalist Shulu out of the Tarim Basin. Sugr’s people now suffer under the yoke of the Mongol slime, and worse still, the holiest site of the Khitan faithful, the valley of Emil, has been touched by their unclean feet.

Within their first year of bursting forth from featureless Mongolia, already the Mongols committed the greatest atrocity they ever would against the Khitan. Their existence was affront enough, their claims to be world-rulers worse still, yet their greatest insult of all was their disrespect to the Monument of Dashi.

When the Genghis Khan arrived in Emil and saw the massive shrine and the Buddhist temple beneath it, he recoiled in disgust at the presence of the monument to Father Khitan. He ordered the adherents in the temple to be slaughtered, he pried the plaques from the sides of the great monument which detailed the deeds of the Khitan, and he called for siege engineers from the Chinese frontier to break the statue of Dashi from the back of the horse and crush it. When this was done (and the head of Dashi defaced and buried), Temujin ordered the creation of an even greater statue in his likeness to be placed on the back of the horse, for the monument to be rechristened as a symbol of Mongol dominance.

One of the only documents to survive the reign of Agdji I was the “Proclamation of the Destruction of the Mongol People and House of Borjigin,” mostly because it was promulgated so widely. In it, Agdji Huangdi declared that:

“Their men will become our kindling; their women our slaves; their babes, targets for our arrows. Their mongrel grasslands will become our hunting preserves, their palaces of dirt our places of defecation. Their great accomplishments will be burned to dust before the might of the Da Liao, who will never forget the affront that existing in the same world as the Mongol animals has forced upon their noble lives. At the point of Khitan spears, their end will come--slowly and arduously, as they themselves have made us suffer.”

Most historians who argue that Agdji’s genocides were entirely intentional point quite decisively to this document.

News from the east, when Agdji finally heard of it from his outriders rushing back west, was horrible on the main: the Mongol arrival, the defacement of the Monument to Dashi, the conquest of Kashgar and heroic final stand of Sugr at the gates of Kucha (the Mongols, blessedly, honored his sacrifice and allowed his son Aepak III to maintain his control of the territory, choosing not to slaughter the Uighur people for their loyalty to the Khitan, though they might easily have). The news regarding the Shulu was certainly not good either, but it was far better than what Agdji had initially believed: relying on reports which had reached Tunga Tatran from the Miguniai governate, Agdji believed that his friend Shulu Cha had betrayed him as well. Yet outriders from the east, following a dangerous cat-and-mouse ride through Mongol-occupied territory and back again, brought word directly from Cha himself confirming his continued loyalty. Acting as Agdji Huangdi’s regent in the east, Cha had carved a great swathe out of the Seljuk Empire, fighting westward to reach Persia.

It was welcome news, as Cha was a skilled commander and fiercely loyal--moreover, it served to shore up flagging morale in Huangjin Zhongxin by showing Agdji and the other Khitan nobles that the entire empire had not, as previously believed, betrayed them: there were some loyalists, including the remnants of an entire governate.

The problem was simply that the Mongols had already ransacked the Tarim Basin, killing Sugr and capturing the primary pasture lands of Cha. Although the governor was fighting west, it was not clear whether he could make it to Poland ahead of the Mongols, and Agdji could not spare him anything other than scouts. It was better news than hearing of no loyalists at all, but it was still not good news.

Yet the worst news of all, save the news that the Monument to Dashi had been defaced, came from the Middle Kingdom. Word arrived in the Jin Khidan Zhou just behind the outriders who had contacted Shulu Cha that rumors from the Road of Silk were clear: a branch of the Mongols under Chulgetei Borjigin, son of Temujin, had begun a great campaign against the Qin. Not content to simply conquer the remnants of the Khitan state, with their power now at its apex the Mongols had declared their intention to rule heaven and earth together, to form a unified empire stretching from the Middle Kingdom to the uttermost west, eclipsing the Khitan in everything and tossing down their mantle of rule as the Liao.

The news was surprising, given scout reports about the size of the Mongol host; even Agdji was stunned at the number of men it seemed that the so-called Genghis Khan could summon to his banners while having yet more in reserve for the conquest of the Middle Kingdom. Apparently the Qin, still recovering from their relatively recent civil war and only having just fully eradicated the Song empire to the south, were in a position of extreme weakness at the time of the invasion. To make the situation worse, the Qin had long relied upon the support of the Liao, especially the many superior Khitan cavalry commanders and horses which Agdji had regularly sent east, and without the support of the Liao the morale and organization of their armies was collapsing. Many of the Qin armies had already deserted to the initially-thin Mongol ranks, giving them the wherewithal to continue their invasion. If Emperor Shunzong--none less than the Lady Huei’s brother--could not stop the defections and mount a unified defense, it was entirely possible that the Borjigin could prove victorious. Should they, the greatest of all prizes would become theirs, and the might of the Middle Kingdom would be added to their great western campaigns. It was the worst-case scenario.

When the news was relayed to Agdji Huangdi he quickly passed it on to the Lady Huei, who did not take it well at all. Her relationship with her brother had been quite strong prior to leaving the Middle Kingdom--something of an abnormality for any Han Dynasty, the Qin included--and she had clearly always conceived of herself as an ambassador and guide to the Liao of sorts: an agent of the Qin sent in good faith, serving the interests of the Liao while not forgetting her origins. It seemed to Agdji that she had never really seriously believed that her Dynasty could fall, at least not so quickly: that the Qin and the Liao would both keep their honor and their word and would rule jointly, one in the West and the other in the East. Now, with the collapse of the Khitan Empire and the invasion of the Qin, it seemed that danger was suddenly on the horizon for her and her children: the power of the Liao broken and the fate of her Dynasty and her brother’s life uncertain, the order of the world as she conceived it seemed to collapse. She soon turned to drink, to the dismay of both the Huangdi and her husband.

Huei would forego the bottle again within a year’s time, showing the strength of her character and tenacity of her spirit, but in the year from mid-1211 to 1212, her influence in the Emperor’s court would wane again, as Agdji Huangdi marginalized her due to concerns about her alcoholism and what she would do if given access to the scant rumors available to the Khitan about how badly the Qin were performing in the war. Although once she mastered herself anew she would slowly reintegrate into court life in Huangjin Zhongxin, she would never return to the level of influence she had prior to the Mongol invasion, and her temporary lapse would only reinforce the Huangdi's belief that women were weak creatures, only the best of whom could ever master themselves for more than a few days at a time. He acknowledged Huei as a great woman, but could one not also select a favorite pet?

If the Mongol invasion was good for anything at all, it was the shock that it provided to Agdji’s bannermen. The Emperor’s decision not to pursue the invasion and reconquest of the east had led many of them to question his mettle, especially given the almost religious connotations of sheathing the spears of his army into the earth as he had at the Mountain of Dreams: it was almost as if their martial Emperor, the Destroyer himself, was worshipping peace. They did not like it, and this led them to cling to their power jealously, in case the strength of their liege should fail.

Although the highest nobility of the realm were all relations of--or loyalists to--Agdji, even some of these were loathe to part with their newfound powers. The middle and lower nobility were much more distantly related to the Yaerud, and they outright refused. They were convinced that the Yaerud were abandoning their martial power and becoming weak.

The arrival of the Mongols changed all of this. In an utter panic about the rumors of their size and strength, they realized that likely only Agdji Huangdi himself stood a chance of stopping their brutal advance. In this situation, whatever their concerns about his disposition, they almost tripped over one another to surrender their powers to him, in order to buy greater security from this apex threat to the east.

Although many later scholars would claim that the centralization of the Jin Khidan Zhou was likely the result of the advice of the Lady Huei, they would only be partly correct: although the Lady had advised the Emperor to centralize the realm previously, by the time it was actually carried out she had already fallen from favor. Thus, although it was a policy which Huei had recommended, it was implemented almost entirely by Agdji Huangdi through the nascent Khitan bureaucracy.

Due to Huei’s absence from the good graces of the court during the period of initial centralization, Agdji was forced to rely on his limited understanding of government, the previous rule of his dynasty, and the bureaucracy he had available to him in order to structure his newly-centralizing polity. De facto, there was simply not enough extant knowledge, specialization or infrastructure in the Jin Khidan Zhou for Agdji to conceive of a government structure at all akin to the rulership of the Middle Kingdom, or for such a government structure to have been successfully implemented even if he could have conceived of it. This more-or-less guaranteed that Agdji would instead turn to the nearby west for inspiration on styles of rule. In this light, the diffuse rulership structure of the Jin Khidan Zhou, with powerful governors, rampant brigandage and mass unrest and migration still underway, made the feudal system appear attractive to the Emperor. It would allow him to delegate much responsibility to his governors while still retaining clear control of the state, and the concept of a contract between ruler and ruled was, in Agdji’s supremely limited understanding, somewhat akin to the concept of the Mandate of Heaven in the Middle Kingdom: it was divine rule that was nevertheless based in some respect on the concept of the consent of the governed to affirm that God anointed the Huangdi with His Mandate. Although a convoluted and very European-influenced understanding of a thoroughly Sinic concept, it was not an entirely irrational interpretation.

In order to confirm the new government structure of the Jin Khidan Zhou, Agdji borrowed once more from the west, this time in the concept of the crowning ceremony. Although Agdji did not NEED to be crowned, already having earned his rule by right of his martial prowess and having been confirmed in it by the Pope and Patriarch, nevertheless the Emperor wished to formally receive the assent of his vassals to his rule, to his demand that Agdji the Younger succeed him as Emperor, and confirmation that his vassals recognized his right to rule as Emperor via the Mandate of Heaven.

Thus, Agdji Huangdi, who forty-five years before despaired of his chances to live long enough to bring his people west, instead lived long enough not only to do this but to become the first crowned Khitan. Although the Pope acknowledged the rule of Agdji from the point of the declaration of the Jin Khidan Zhou, formally the rule of Agdji I is dated from 26 July 1211, when he sat the gold-inlaid throne in Huangjin Zhongxin and was adorned with the mantle of rule.

It goes without saying that the vassalage of Agdji unanimously assented to his right to rule, his choice of Agdji the Younger as his successor, and conferred upon him the “consensus of the vassals of the Da Liao that the Mandate of Heaven rests firmly in the hands of the Yaerud.”

Although this consensus was of great strength to Agdji in the short-term, as the years passed the concept that the vassals of the Emperor had the ability to grant or retract confirmation of the Mandate of Heaven would have significant ramifications upon the selection of future Emperors.

In the short-term, however, it was indeed a great boon. Agdji’s vassals were terrified of the Mongol advance, and rightly so—not even a year later and the Genghis Khan had already managed to entirely destroy the remnants of the Miguniai Governate, and was once again jealously eyeing the Shulu as Cha II desperately attempted to flee west to meet with Agdji.

As the Mongols drew ever-closer Agdji’s vassals only panicked all the more, and with Huei slowly beginning to regain some influence at the court, she was able to persuade Agdji to centralize the realm even further.

Although nominally increasing the authority of the Huangdi by confirming his right to rule and possession of the Mandate, de facto the declaration of a feudal hierarchy in which the governates which Agdji had handed out were acknowledged to be hereditary titles with their own acknowledged traditions, laws and rights had actually weakened the Imperial center significantly. Worse still, the response of the vassalage at Agdji's coronation implied that the feudal lords of the Jin Khidan Zhou had the right to retract the Mandate entirely from the Liao if they so wished. This horrified Huei, and in a decree known as the “Responsibilities of the Servants of the Liao,” Huei sought to respond to the declaration of feudalism by clarifying certain requirements of the vassals of the Emperor, as well as reducing their perceived power.

In all, the decree demanded that the respective feudal governors of the realm prepare and maintain levies for the Emperor, disclose to the Emperor the size of their forces, increase their payments to the Emperor’s coffers in exchange for the rights of their feudal contract, and also forbid the vassalage from the right to grant or revoke the Mandate by clarifying that Imperial vassals could only deny the right of an individual member of the Yaerud to hold the Mandate: it would always be possessed by a member of the Dynasty, but individual members of the Yaerud could be found unfit.

In all, the decree did little to actually formalize the powers of the Emperor, but it serve to militarize the Jin Khidan Zhou, as well as preventing a further backslide. Its greatest strength was the theoretical power that it gave the Yaerud by making it illegal for any not of their House to succeed to the throne, but few historians view it as likely that any other dynasty could ever have successfully seen an emperor placed on the Golden Throne.

At the turn of the next year, “Biaen the Beautiful” was born to Agdji and one of his lesser wives, a woman whose name he would be hard-pressed to remember even were she before him. Ever since the death of Gulcicek Agdji did not much care for any woman who shared his bed, even those who gave him children. All that mattered was that they had been joined by the terms of the Conclave of Galich, and Biaen, unlike his elder brother Toqsoba, was regarded as a legitimate scion of the Yaerud.

Biaen’s birth, however, did raise questions. All of Biaen’s brothers, even Toqsoba, had fiefs of their own to rule. Yet there was now no more land left within the Jin Khidan Zhou with which to grant Biaen. With the Empire beginning to militarize in order to stand against the Mongol threat, there were soldiers enough to march forward, but where, and to what end? Agdji flatly refused to move against the same Christians which he swore he would shield with his life, and that left only expansion to the east, yet would it be wise to expand should it stretch the Empire’s borders closer to the Mongol threat which even now was approaching?

Agdji brought these concerns to his sons, and to bishops representing the Pope and Patriarch in Huangjin Zhongxin. For their parts, ever eager for war as they were, the Emperor’s sons argued that expansion could only strengthen the Empire for struggles to come, and were in favor of landing Biaen to further strengthen the Dynasty.

The bishops were likewise eager for Agdji to expand, although when they giddily suggested that he advance towards the pagans, Agdji flatly denied the possibility: their lands were poor, and if Agdji was to take land even as the Jin Khidan Zhou was still in the throes of the tumultuous Khitan settlement, it would need to be wealthy land worthy of the expenditure.

This caused some great concern for the bishops, for eastern Europe was not well-known for its rich cities. Eventually, though, they seized upon a possibility: Kiev. The city was large (for Rus lands, at any rate), wealthy, and currently controlled by a heresiarch. Although Agdji was greatly discomfited about the bishops’ description of this Bogomilist heresy as being an anti-clerical faith which denied the supremacy of any branch of Christianity (how was this different from Tengrism as defined by the Conclave of Galich, he wondered?) there was little choice in the matter: if Agdji wished to take wealthy land, Kiev was the land which beckoned most brightly.

And so, for the first time since the disbanding of the Khitan host, Agdji called forth the men of the Jin Khidan Zhou to war.

Never before having called levied men to war and used to his cavalry army of 10,000 horsem*n, Agdji was not sure what the results of levying men for war would be: would his men, now farmers and burghers in the main, obey his call? Would his vassals be able to supply them properly? Did he know enough about how to lead troops on foot that he would not bungle the entire campaign, and earn the reputation of a dotard?

His fears turned out to be baseless, as the small bureaucracy of the Jin Khidan Zhou proved up to the challenge of the first levying. Although the Imperial vassals displayed serious inefficiencies in their levying and many of their men shirked duty--a problem which the Emperor would spend years struggling to fix, yet which would not truly be repaired until the rule of his successor--the heartland levies from Huangjin Zhongjin, Agdji the Younger and Ago proved more than enough to compensate. Over 6,000 men were successfully gathered and marched upon Kiev, more than enough to seize the territory. Agdji proved capable of waging war with only a limited force of cavalry, and his reputation as a great warrior was somewhat restored in the eyes of his vassals for being able to conquer the great walled city in less than six months.

In the aftermath of the victorious war, the bishops representing Constantinople pressed Agdji to treat the heretics of Kiev harshly, and although he was hesitant to punish a faith with basic tenets similar to his own interpretation of Christianity, Agdji acquiesced to their wishes, partly to ensure the continued cooperation of the Byzantine Emperor and partly to help ensure that the territory could be pacified and eventually settled with Khitans.

In name Biaen was landed as the Lord of Kiev, but as he was an infant de facto the territory was the Emperor's to administer for many years. For a time, the realm would settle into a flow where Agdji would rule from Huangjin Zhongxin during the summer and from Kiev during the winter, marking the first instance of migratory capitals for the Liao in the west.

To Agdji’s immense frustration, immediately after his violent repression of the Bogomil heresy on behalf of the East Romans, Basileus Sabatios Komnenos, his ally in Constantinople, died suddenly while complaining of acute chest pain. Sabatios’s death--unexpected, as he was but 35 years old--has led to the surprise proclamation of an outsider as Emperor, whom neither the Byzantine bureaucratic and noble establishment nor the Khitans have a great deal of experience with: Prvoslav Nemanjic, a Serb dynast who had adopted Greek cultural norms.

Unfortunately for the Khitans Prvoslav has little interest in supporting them, or respecting their acquiescence to punish the Bogomil heresy. As an outsider who must rely on orthodoxy and tradition in order to shore up his uncertain rule, Prvoslav proves unwilling to practice idiosyncratic policies, either religious or cultural, so that he might portray himself as a traditionalist Emperor--he thus all but cuts all contact with the Jin Khidan Zhou, isolating them with but a single minor bishop as his representative in the Khitan court.

For some time it seemed as though the sudden disconnect from Constantinople would be survived without issue: Agdji busied himself with trying to formalize the systems for raising levies, and rebellions throughout East Rome threatened to remove Prvoslav from the throne, which would have restored Komnenoi friendly to the Khitan cause. Yet Prvoslav won a surprise victory that firmly secured the throne for himself, and, as if to add insult to the defeat, not long thereafter Agdji’s sixth son, Dashi, died from an outbreak of dysentery at his seat in Belz.

Agdji was not close to Dashi--indeed, he tended to think that Dashi was an insult to the name of his father, weak and cynical as he was. Yet he still bore the name of Father Khitan and was still a son of the Huangdi, and his death shocked Agdji far more due to how inauspicious it seemed that one who bore the name of the greatest Khitan had died young and in agony. It was also a deeply unpleasant reminder of the mortality of the Yaerud--one which Agdji, approaching his 72nd year and already fighting to avoid the creeping feeling that death was moving to claim him at any moment, did not need. Already he was older than both his father and Ituk had been when they passed, and was sure the end of his life was approaching him rapidly.

Agdji spent many months following Dashi’s death in prayer, seeking to ward off any ill favor which Heaven might have placed upon him, but he did not mourn--he did not know his youngest sons well enough to. Ituk and Djoborin took note of how their father merely grew more distant still from them.

But the Khitans’ problems only continued to compound themselves. By the end of 1215, the issue of the treasury had come to a head.

Never particularly wealthy territory, eastern Poland had long been regarded as relatively marginal land with no great cities or resources--indeed, this was part of the reason why the Conclave of Galich had been content to permit the Khitans to settle there. Although thousands of ducats had been invested into Huangjin Zhongxin and Prusa in order to construct the Imperial heartland and raise up a great urban center for the realm, the rest of the Kingdom suffered from poverty, brigandage, and a simple lack of good governance. This, combined with the massive disruptions caused by the still-ongoing settlement of Khitans at the frontier and the relative weakness of the Huangdi compared to his vassals, served to make the expenditures of the court much greater than the court’s income. And now, scarcely six years after the declaration of the Jin Khidan Zhou, the 15,500 ducat-weights of gold with which Agdji had begun had already dwindled to a paltry 1,650.

Agdji himself had been completely unaware of this, and had occupied himself constantly building cities, fortifications, barracks and training grounds, and massive projects such as the Imperial capital and crypt with no real concern for their cost. Many of the bureaucrats who had access to the treasury were terrified of telling the Emperor the truth about the financial state of the Empire, and eventually the Lady Huei was forced to break the news.

In a panic, Agdji and Huei worked together to craft a decree which forced any Imperial vassal to provide about one-twentieth of their yearly earnings directly to the Emperor as a tax. Yet with how impoverished the lords of the Jin Khidan Zhou were, this did not even move the Empire’s monthly expenditures into the black before taking new building projects into account. The situation was grave.

It was the winter of 1217, and thus Agdji had been nearby, in the southern capital at Kiev, when he received the news. He forbade his court from accompanying him as he, at the advanced age of 73, rode alone--and hard--for Pinsk. He summoned only Agdji the Younger to his side.

There, on the 22nd day of February as the Christians reckoned it, they entered into the hillfort at Pinsk which had once been the seat of Toqsoba, Agdji’s only illegitimate child. Had once been. For, as Agdji and his namesake entered into the cold fort, they saw the body of the child reposing upon a plinth which had been brought forth to hold him.

His body was not clean; it was not poison or illness which had laid the boy low. His neck had been cut, and his tunic was dyed burgundy with his life's blood. The eyes of the child, bulging yet milky, showed well that horror had been his last sensation in life.

For the death of his son Dashi, Agdji Huangdi had not mourned. He had been an unworthy son to bear the name of Father Khitan. But Agdji the Younger could tell that his father, although his face remained a mask of cool control, was on the verge of tears now. This lad was young, and had not showed himself some failure.

“Could the Christians have done this?” the Huangdi asked finally.

“Because they thought him a bastard?” the younger Agdji offered. “They could have, perhaps, but they did not. As I rode in the marshal for Toqsoba claimed they had retrieved a confession from one of the worker-women here.”

Yet Agdji the Younger said nothing further, and his father rounded upon him, his eyes wetting at the edges. “Speak it! Punishment must come to those who would spill the blood of our house!”

Yet still the younger delayed, and only slowly spoke at long last. “He said that the scullery maid let in one of your women, and she only. Daina of the Lietuvai.”

What happened in the eight years between 1209 and 1217 was not a foregone conclusion. Some years, Agdji was active in the affairs of his realm, working with his vassals to make their levying more efficient, overseeing the building of Huangjin Zhongxin, or working with the Lady Huei to draft edicts to--at least theoretically--bolster Imperial power. But the reality was that Agdji was a warrior, and always would be. He understood the concept of being Huangdi only in the almost dreamlike sense that it had been imparted to him during his visit to the Middle Kingdom: a sense of splendor, true wealth beyond imagining, but also isolation. Out of anything that Agdji learned from his brief time in the court of Shizu, the greatest take-away was that a true Emperor must remain distant from those who served him, an image of divine magnificence so powerful and splendid that the vast majority of one's people should not even see them, for fear it would remove the air of mysticism and power surrounding them. It was a poor lesson to learn.

As the years passed and the situation in the Jin Khidan Zhou stabilized, Agdji found himself less needed in day-to-day matters, and thus became more and more distant from his vassals, and indeed many members of his family. He left much of the administration to Agdji the Younger, and eventually even forbade many of his younger children from seeing him, admitting only Agdji and, rarely, Ago to his side. This was not, in Agdji’s thinking, a punishment: it was merely a way to reinforce the spiritual and political might of the Huangdi: someone who could rule without ever being seen. For that was Agdji’s foggy ideal of what being a true Emperor was.

The realm truly was stabilizing, but such things were always a process. Through his isolation Agdji sought to make himself larger than life again, a symbol of splendor and power, but in truth all he accomplished was making himself distant and subject to manipulation, just as one of his lesser concubines Daina, who had ever hated him for taking her against her will, had manipulated him now, permitting her to leave court and, in the process, murder one of his children.

Agdji was rarely cruel to anyone who did not, in his view, deserve it. But on those rare occasions when some fool performed some great insult, his rage was known to be uncontrollable. The butchering of al-Hakim and insanity of al-Zahir bore witness to Agdji’s fury. So too did the mutilated corpse of Tunga Tatran, the lone Irkin which Agdji laid his hands upon.

Daina Kesgaila was not different in this. All that differed for her was Agdji’s refusal to permit anyone else to do his work for him.

He burst into the fort at Kiev, dirty from the road and equipped in his armor, wielding his great spear before him as if warding the path from his foes. Daina was standing there, and as she saw him begin to charge her, her eyes bulged and she bolted.

Yet even at seventy-three, Agdji was somehow strong. He outran her, tripping her with the haft of his spear. She crashed to the floor, and even as the courtiers in the hall tripped over themselves to flee, the Huangdi pounced upon her back, gripping her skull in a hand still strong as a vice and slamming her head down, again and again.

“Filthy. Lithuanian. whor*! WHO. ARE. YOU. TO. TAKE. A. SON. FROM. ME!?”

Each word was punctuated with the crunching of bone as Agdji slammed her head to the floor and, one after another, they broke: nose, jaw, cheek.

The woman whimpered, drooling blood from her broken face, but the Emperor was not done. He jumped to his feet as spry as if he were still forty, the blade of his spear dancing a deadly arc as it severed the head of the bitch from her body. He bent slowly then, of a sudden once more the tired and frail old man he was in truth, and lifted it by the hair until her broken visage was level with his eyes.

“I will keep you,” his whispered to her, almost tender in his madness. “So I do not forget.”

The murder of Daina, in plain sight of the assembled court of the Jin Khidan Zhou, changed many things. Bishops were there who saw how Agdji behaved, and were terrified that the “civilized” Prester John had become an uncivilized barbarian in an instant, even with the murder of his child taken into account. They were even more petrified that he had kept the skull of the woman he killed, and could not be persuaded to part with it; the only thing he eventually agreed to do was mount it above what was to become his crypt at the mausoleum of Galich, which was still under construction.

Fears over the Huangdi’s barbarism--fears which had previously been swept under the rug or outright denied as slander--soon reached Rome, and it was decided that the loyalty of Prester John needed to be put to the test. Thus, when the Fourth Crusade was called to save the realm of King Leonardo II in Jerusalem, the Roman clergy pushed Agdji strongly to commit men to the endeavor, to secure peace for his soul through holy war.

Yet however much Agdji hated Muslims, he did not care about some distant holy land; for him, the sky above was his holy beacon. Moreover, he did not have the ships to commit to such an endeavor even if he had wished it. The clergy suggested that he march overland, and to this he demurred; when the bishops chastised him for his recalcitrance, he outright refused.

“I am not a slave,” Agdji replied angrily. “I swore that I would protect you, and I will--but protection is not aggression. I cannot abandon a realm so new as my own, and surely you must know this.”

Agdji’s refusal led to serious concerns about his loyalty, which only abated after the Huangdi, frustrated, promised to send 500 ducat-weights of gold to the King of Jerusalem to help secure his victory, in lieu of sending men. It bought the continued tolerance of Rome, but for a treasury already struggling it was a high price indeed.

The renewed interest of the bishops into the affairs of the Jin Khidan Zhou came at an inopportune time indeed, for Agdji was just beginning to try one more time to integrate himself into the government of his state in a more-than-cursory way. The bribe of 500 ducats to remove the ‘requirement’ that Agdji march to fight at Jerusalem was an imposition on top of this imposition, and between struggles over wealth and manpower--already a major concern as the Mongols approached from the east--it was not one that the Huangdi was inclined to tolerate. Yet what choice did he have?

The Emperor did not have the funds to summon his own forces to go to war, yet imminent expansion, despite the dangers associated with expanding the already-overextended realm, was a clear necessity in the face of the Mongol threat. Thus Agdji ordered Agdji the Younger and Ago to wage war on his behalf, to expand his domain and their own.

Ago was the first to obey the orders of his Huangdi, seizing the Belsk territory in the minor Lithuanian kingdom of Podlyashe. It was a minor expansion, but worth at least some men and gold. And better still, it convinced the bishops of Rome that the Khitans were willing to march against Christ’s enemies, merely not yet so far from their homes.

Yet the actual wealth gained from Ago’s venture was minimal indeed, and it did not stop the Khitan treasury from bleeding out. Agdji had yet to come by the amount of money which he had promised the King of Jerusalem, and the Roman bishops were beginning to see threat in the Khitans once more. Thus, reluctantly, Agdji called forth the levies of his realm to march forth--not to battle, but to pillage.

When Agdji Huangdi had settled his people in the Jin Khidan Zhou, he had hoped that their days of brigandage and pillaging were over, or at least over in an organized sense. He had underestimated the funds that would be required in order to build a true state in poor eastern Poland, however, and how much reliance he had placed upon the forceful acquisition of wealth from others during the days of the Khitan host: Khitan men were simply not yet accustomed to making money through industry and trade rather than taking it from others. Poor land and unskilled peoples forced Agdji to turn toward the clock back and raid once more.

The target of this raid was the Bogomilist lords to the southeast, near Kiev, who were vassals to the Turburur. Their lands were wealthy, and in sacking them Agdji Huangdi hoped to both strengthen himself and weaken the Turburur by depriving them of some of their resources.

How much the raid damaged the Turburur is not clear, but it did at least secure Agdji Huangdi enough funds to pay the King of Jerusalem his money.

Shortly after the completion of the raid south, Agdji the Younger completes his part of the expansion, capturing Suduva and investing his youngest son Qutug there as its lord, the first of Agdji Huangdi’s landed grandchildren. Suduva is not particularly wealthy or mighty, but controlling it reduces the risk of Huangjin Zhongxin easily being invaded from the east, and at least provides nominally more levies to the Huangdi.

Although Khitan chronicles liked to claim that Agdji’s payment of 500 ducats had been critical to keep the flagging morale of Leonardo II’s men high and secure victory in the Crusade, the reality is that al-Zahir did not really ever have a chance; his realm in the Levant was so distant from his capital in Anatolia that it was his in name only, and the Crusade rapidly turned his fortunes against him and secured control of the region for Christ once more.

Although Agdji Huangdi is pleased that his expenditure of funds was not utterly wasted--to send such an amount of money only for the King to lose it would have been a blow on top of a blow--he is not really pleased about the victory until he hears it mentioned in passing that his granddaughter is the Queen of the realm!

Having lived for so long and with such an extended family, including daughters sent far abroad and Aerlu’on in the Holy Roman Empire, it was sometimes easy for Agdji to lose track of where his descendants lived, and this went doubly for those that were not of the male line. Yet Siau Telgen, his granddaughter through his eldest daughter Ordelhan’s blood, was indeed the Queen of Jerusalem.

What was before a slightly curt note meant to reach the King of Jerusalem alongside a promissory note from the Knights Templar soon flowed out into an intricate and detailed account of events in the Jin Khidan Zhou intended for the hands of Telgen. It so happens that the happy coincidence of this document’s existence is one of historians’ few insights into the events of the early Jin Khidan Zhou, for it is one of the few which survived to the present day.

The “Letter to Telgen” is the first historical evidence for the shift in Khitan understanding of succession from a concept of succession through strength, the model throughout much of Agdji’s reign, to a system of succession by consensus. Agdji discussed at some length the concept of the Mandate of Heaven originating in the consensus of his vassalage, and praised them for unanimously backing the succession of Agdji the Younger, thereby confirming the Yaerud possession of the Mandate. This radically new interpretation of the Mandate was originally the focus of the scholars who first uncovered the document, and is certainly worthy of the analysis which it has received, but in recent years the historiography of the letter has shifted to focus instead upon how much more important it is that, even before the end of Agdji’s life, the internal Khitan understanding of the right to rule had come to respect the will of the governed. Many prior historians had assumed that Agdji the Younger and his immediate successors had taken the throne through bare strength, but it appears that they were duly chosen before any of them came to the throne.

Early in the year 1220 a rider suddenly appeared in Huangjin Zhongxin as if on wings, riding so hard that the mount that reached the capital was ragged and foaming at the mouth, and died mere minutes after its rider had sprung from its back at the feet of the great palace. The messenger raced up the steps of the still-unfinished edifice, raced through the great double-doors that barred passage to the inner court--barred passage to any save for servants of the Huangdi, that is--and raced further still inside, to the inner palace. He slammed through door after door, holding aloft the sigil of the Emperor to avoid Agdji’s guards waylaying his path, making his way ever closer to the Imperial apartments. Agdji, forewarned of the disturbance, raced out to meet him.

“What news?” the Emperor cried racing forward as quickly as his shaking legs would carry him, and the messenger fell to his knees, gasping for breath.

“Civil war, Huangdi,” the young man gasped between ragged breaths. “Civil war among the Mongols. One of the Genghis Khan’s bastard sons has risen up against him. Their numbers… their numbers are uncountable. One-hundred thousand at least between them, and more. The war they wage is brutal, Huangdi. It could be the end of the Mongols.”

News of the Mongol Civil War, waged between the Ghengis Khan himself and one of his youngest bastard sons, spread like wildfire throughout Huangjin Zhongxin, and soon beyond. What had long been regarded as an impossible situation in the east soon began to refashion itself in the minds of many Khitans--if this young man, Timur, could succeed in bleeding the realm of his father of its vast hordes, the top-heavy realm of the Genghis Khan might yet fall. For Temujin had been over-eager to rid the east wholly of the Khitans, and had pursued the realm of Shulu Cha II to its eradication in Persia, in the process absorbing a large amount of rebellious Muslim vassals. Agdji had not long ago learned that Cha had remained loyal to him all along, and deeply mourned that his friend, the only loyal Irkin, had perished. Yet he could at least hope that the Mongols might be unable to maintain control of their vast territories when faced with the assault of Timur, as well as so many new and rebellious vassals.

The Huangdi ordered that Huei be put in charge of monitoring the situation, and gave over to her full control of the network of outriders that the Jin Khidan Zhou still maintained in the east, with the reasoning that Huei would have access both to Khitan informants and any Han individuals whom the Borjigin might have brought west from their war in the Middle Kingdom due to her position as a lady of the Qin, and sister to the reigning Emperor. Although Agdji was reluctant to give her access to information about how poorly her brother was faring in his war against the Mongols, Agdji viewed extremely accurate information about the Civil War as critical, worth the risk that Huei might experience another mental breakdown and descend back into her alcoholism.

Alas for Agdji, the jubilance of the Mongol Civil War did not draw away the attention of all of his great vassals--there was one who dared to petition Agdji himself during those days.

Djoborin, the so-called child of prophesy, had recently come of age. Having come into his own, he proved what was long suspected: he was, indeed, a prodigy. At sixteen years old Djoborin had already shown strategic genius without the slightest training, besting even Ago at the courses, who had ridden with Agdji from the time he was but eight. The two Agdjis were the only men in the whole of Europe who could best Djoborin at war.

And this spoke nothing of his great stature in all other regards, both physical and mental; for Djoborin had inherited Agdji’s strength, but also the height and genius of his mother, Yildiz Baruq. Many had feared that, like his mother, Djoborin’s towering intellect would drive him to lunacy, but they need not have worried--of madness, at least; Djoborin was quite sane. But that only made him more dangerous, cunning as a fox and ambitious, with all but no care for the history or culture of his people. Even at sixteen, he was a clear vision of the man he was to become: three steps ahead even of his allies, cold and calculating, with not a single concern of what must be done to achieve his goals, so long as they were indeed achieved in the end. To put it simply, Djoborin was frightening, even to those who had his favor.

Agdji had little interaction with his younger children and preferred to keep it that way, having long ago lost the ability to feel genuine affection for those children whom he had not begotten in his youth. Yet Djoborin could not be denied; he held the Mountain of Dreams within his lands, as well as the great tomb-complex of the Ten Thousand Spears, and was regarded as a child of prophesy by most of the Khitan people. And worse still, he was not above leveraging such things to get his way.

Djoborin soon rode to Huangjin Zhongxin in order to undertake a ceremony of fealty to Agdji Huangdi. Yet while there, to the shock of the court and the outrage of the Emperor, before even kowtowing before his lord father, Djoborin pressed for more power.

Couching his argument in concern for the sanctity of the Mountain of Dreams, Djoborin eloquently argued that Peremyshl was not only de jure a part of eastern Poland which had been legally surrendered to the Khitan, but that it was critical to control it to secure the passes over the Mountain of Dreams, and to bring stability to the area, which was presently lawless due to a civil war in Hungary. It was legal and productive to secure the land--and, as steward of the Mountain, the land should be his to govern.

It was blatant ambition, yet the boy’s argument was not without merit; indeed, those merits were so clearly evident that to ignore them would risk making Agdji look a fool. This only enraged Agdji further. He had brought the Khitan to Europe to become a part of it; declaring war on a Christian, no matter the circ*mstances, jeopardized everything. And yet here sat one of his youngest children, a mewling pup, smirking self-righteously about his ploy, undertaken in the very halls of his father.

“A nigg*rdly son you are to beg land before even bowing,” Agdji replied. “But your words have merit, and I will act upon them, with the consent of the Pope and Patriarch. But it will not be your land to hold.”

The smirk slid from Djoborin’s face, to be replaced by a mask of calm--yet his eyes glowed with fury.

“Try it,” Agdji rasped, and his voice took on a perverse tone, almost of excitement. “I am old, but try it.”

The boy’s face did not change, but he did bow--very slowly.

Agdji chortled. “You are a babe. If you truly are so swift of mind as they say, you will have learned something--everything you have was given by me. And I can take it from you, by the strength of my own hands.”

For all of his genius, Djoborin was a young man who lacked experience. His misstep had led to humiliation, and was worsened when Agdji Huangdi elected to give control of Peremyshl to Djoborin’s brother Dashi, a man whom Agdji reviled as weak--implying that Djoborin was even less tolerable. This was indeed a lesson for the young man--that subterfuge, bribery, and allies in high places were all better tools than simple wordplay. The knowledge only made him more dangerous.

Although the popularity and power of Agdji all but required Djoborin to pay at least nominal homage to the wishes of the Emperor--and despite his best efforts Djoborin was forced to admire his father in many ways despite his shame and fury--no love was to be lost between the two of them.

This antipathy made Djoborin more attractive than he would have expected. For those who were dissatisfied with the "pacifistic," Sinophilic court of the Huangdi which had sprung up following the Khitan settlement--which they universally blamed on the influence of the Lady Huei, absolving Agdji himself from guilt while still wishing to return to their martial past--Djoborin became the embodiment of hopes for a reformist Empire. In their view, Djoborin had proven himself a real force in Imperial politics, with ambitions of power and the skills to make even Agdji Huangdi bend, if not break.

Agdji now rarely stepped forth from Huangjin Zhongxin, but this did not mean he was deaf. Loyal officials heard these mutterings and reported them, and to counteract the danger of the pro-Djoborin faction, Agdji undertook two significant steps. First, following the childless death of Unkut Urelbun, Agdji passed his territory of Sandomierz to Diluguin, Agdji the Younger’s second son and a child who was born, like Djoborin, directly after the Conclave of Galich, and thus could also be said to be a child of prophesy. Second, he issued an Imperial proclamation declaring that Agdji the Younger’s children by the Lady Huei were specifically chosen to be the lords of the Jin Khidan Zhou due to the intermingling of the blood of the Liao and the Qin made manifest in their person; specifically, Agdji named Diluguin as Agdji the Younger’s direct heir.

The importance of this proclamation is hotly contested by scholars. On the one hand, regardless of the actual legal limits of his power, Agdji Huangdi’s word was law; yet on the other, in this specific instance Agdji (at least formally) lacked both the legal and cultural authority to name a specific successor, as Dashi himself had set down that strength alone should rule.

The memory of Agdji’s half-brother Belbun had been lost to almost all of the Khitan, to the extent that few of them even knew that Agdji had ever had a brother. Even among those who remembered that Dashi had had an elder son, only scholars bothered to remember that Dashi had slain him in a duel for control of the Celestial Khanate. Yet even in the absence of this memory--the knowledge that, had Belbun survived, he would have ruled instead of Agdji--all Khitan knew that Dashi was the Emperor who had instituted the rule of succession by strength, even if they did not know how, or why. And here Agdji’s own tendencies worked against him, as his mythologizing of Dashi made it very difficult for him to even partially contradict any policy which it was clear that Dashi instituted.

Recent scholarship has moved away from arguing that the so-called “Proclamation of the Rule of the Joined Liao and Qin Lines” was really anything of the sort. Rather than trying to force a specific succession system, the Proclamation is now seen as a simple statement of support, a generalized argument that, ultimately, the Imperial line of the Jin Khidan Zhou should descend from Agdji the Younger’s children, not from the sons of any of Agdji Huangdi’s other sons. Yet in naming Diluguin specifically as the heir of Agdji the Younger and landing him, it’s also undeniable that Agdji Huangdi was attempting to bolster his grandson’s chances for success, and undermine Djoborin’s claims that he was the only prophet-child--Diluguin, too, was born just after the Khitan success at the Conclave. The Proclamation was both more important than a scrap of paper, yet less binding than earlier scholarship would have liked to suggest.

Yet discussion of the so-called Primogeniture document is vastly overshadowed by a far more famous deed which occurred roughly contemporaneously.

Agdji Huangdi and the other elite members of the Yaerud had not forgotten the betrayal of Turburur Daudjil, son of Baisha-an, the first of the traitorous Irkin and he who had precipitated the fall of the steppe-spanning Second Liao Empire. Many of the Khitan elite believed (falsely, it must be admitted) that, had Daudjil not betrayed Agdji, none of the Irkin would have dared to do so, and the Imperial collapse might have been avoided. Even though this was wishful thinking in the extreme, Daudjil’s person certainly represented the great failure of the last days of the Khitan Empire.

Worse, though, was that Daudjil was skilled. Miguniai Gu was an incompetent, disfigured solipsist; Hsiu-to Tou II was a frail, drunken recluse; Suni Chugung was strategically skilled, but a craven with no right to rule, hence his bandit past. None of the other rebel Irkin were a true threat.

But even in his youth, Daudjil was different, more dangerous; skilled, physically imposing and with a reputation for brutality, the self-proclaimed Huangdi of the Don-Volga Khanate was a strong ruler. Indeed, Daudjil had intentionally provoked the Yaerud whenever possible, pressing on to the borders of the Jin Khidan Zhou and forcing tribute from its neighbors, and raiding the Principality of Kiev constantly.

Although relations with Kiev were tense due to the Khitan occupation of the eponymous city, it was not lost upon Grand Prince Lev Rurikovich that the Yaerud had been forced to occupy the city originally as a result of the Turburur destabilizing the region. He begged the aid of Agdji Huangdi to stop the raids.

And so, at the end of his twilight years, Agdji Huangdi took up his spear a final time.

Lacking any evidence that Lev Rurikovich had asked for aid, to scholars it still appears as if Agdji decided to challenge Daudjil for virtually no reason, suddenly, over a decade after the collapse. Agdji was seventy-eight years old, one of the oldest nobles in Europe, and despite the textual evidence of his powerful physique, no scholar could imagine that Agdji was anything but extremely frail at his advanced age. Meanwhile Daudjil was in his prime, and, if not a master of the sword, nevertheless well-trained.

Even so, Agdji challenged Daudjil to meet him at Kiev, and the Turburur pridefully accepted. The two Emperors, one rightful and one self-proclaimed, met outside the walls of the city with their great retinues and stepped forth to face one another.

“You are old,” Daudjil taunted, “so old that age should have taken you already. But I thank you for giving me the pleasure. I will avenge my father and take your head.”

Agdji said nothing. Daudjil circled warily and still Agdji said nothing, standing stock still. The Turburur charged suddenly, and Agdji carefully dodged to the side, using his positioning to compensate for the feebleness of his muscles and the stiffness of his bones. As he turned he used his momentum to aid his arm in thrusting out with his great spear, just barely managing to skewer his foe’s thigh instead of missing entirely. As Daudjil toppled, Agdji yanked back his spear and spun somewhat ungracefully, though the result of the strike was still perfect: the point of the blade cleanly cut the carotid artery. Daudjil crumpled to the ground, choking in his own blood.

“I… I,” Agdji gasped out, winded in spite of his careful measuring of strength, “I… am He Who Holds the Threads. This, this fate… it is the future of all who betrayed me. Blood and death comes for all of you, in my life or after it. We will bury you ALL!”

Many thought it impossible that Agdji’s legend could still grow, yet it did. The ancient Emperor had "easily" dispatched the young, masterful Turburur with but two blows. And more critically, he had promised death for every traitor down to the last. Terror renewed throughout the east, with the few free Khitans now bereft of the only competent Khan that had kept the lands safe.

Agdji’s victory over Daudjil completely eradicated the line of the traitor, for Daudjil had no sons, and in the process Agdji gained a newfound reputation for youthful vigor and strength throughout Eurasia. Indeed, figures as prestigious as Pope Lucius II and Basileus Prvoslav were known to have expressed their incredulous congratulations, and Lucius even went so far as to say that Agdji’s victory despite his advanced age was no doubt a sign from God himself that he truly was the fabled Prester John, destined to strike down the traitorous heretics.

Yet Agdji’s victory obscured the reality of the situation. Agdji’s experience in battle and active lifestyle were what saved him. Twenty seconds of combat had left him breathless and wheezing. His eyes had cataracts rapidly becoming so severe that he would soon be forced to rely mostly on sound, and his legs were beginning to become so weak that they could not lift both he and his armor together. A life of hard work and training free from alcohol or the poppy had prolonged his good health, but there were limits to what diet and exercise could do. Agdji’s health had begun to decline years before the duel, and as time passed its deterioration would only accelerate.

It was in this twilight of Agdji’s reign, when he was forced by weakening health to become less involved in the affairs of state, that Agdji the Younger betrayed the wishes of his father.

In most things, the Winged Tiger was the spitting image of his father: a born warrior, cruel, ambitious, proud… and lustful. Like his father, Agdji the Younger’s one great vice was women. In normal circ*mstances he never would have considered betraying his father in anything, but for women he could not control himself. For some years the lay priests had been preaching the sanctity of incest, though Agdji Huangdi was too far removed now to hear it, and his daughter Cheu’en was so beautiful….

Agdji the Younger was the first Yaerud to commit the sin of incest, entering into a relationship of concubinage with his own daughter. He was also the first to commit the greater sin of begetting a child with his own child, the little Qadju. She was, blessedly, free of the deformities which often accompany incest. Indeed, she was even exceptionally fit. But this did not absolve Agdji from siring her, knowing the danger.

Why did he do it? Why did Cheu’en consent to it? Or the Lady Huei, for that matter, who was later found not only to have known of the concubinage, but to have approved of it! Lust might well have blinded the eyes of Agdji the Younger and his daughter, but his wife as well?

Lust was part of it--the taboo of it, in addition to going behind his father’s back. But this was in reality only the tipping of the scales which finally pushed Agdji the Younger over the edge. There was a real rationale, more complicated: the Khitan were being diluted.

Whereas Agdji the Elder had seen in Europe a great wellspring of hope--new friendly peoples, cultures, and a unifying religion--Agdji the Younger saw something altogether more sinister: cultural annihilation, a wave of peoples so massive that it could capsize the fragile dinghy of the Khitan with but a little effort. Already he had seen many Khitan men, soldiers he had known for their whole lives, settle down with local Polish women and sire sons who spoke Polish better than their own native tongue, sons who had been bleached of the features which the Khitans had come to recognize as being representative of the men of the east, bleached as bones under the brilliant light of an overpowering sun.

It was not a racial awareness, but it was the beginnings of an ethnic one. All of the Khitan, the true Khitan, had the bronzed skin, black hair, and dark eyes of the east; they rode horses and spoke their own tongue. It was how they were told apart. If, suddenly, the Khitan were to become as the pale Europeans and to begin speaking their languages, how could a Pole be told apart from a Khitan?

But even this was a surface analysis. Dynasties, titles, city records; there would be ways to prove oneself a Khitan even if all the features of the east were bled from their people. No, what mattered more to Agdji the Younger was the concept of blood.

The Khitan had been tasked by Dashi Huangdi to ride to the west of the world, to settle there, and to change. Eventually, at the height of their new power, they were bidden to turn and ride back to the Middle Kingdom to reclaim their destiny. To do this, the Khitan had to absorb much of the culture, religion, and technology of Europe. But for several years he had been plagued with a black thought, a doubt at the back of his mind from which he could never be free: what would happen if the Khitan did truly become European, utterly European? If they were European, REALLY European, then Europe would be all that mattered to them--would they not abandon the east entirely as unimportant, and in so doing betray their own blood, the blood of Taizu?

But what was to be done; how could an integration which the almighty Agdji the Elder demanded be quelled? None could disobey his words. Except, the Younger eventually realized, in small ways. One thing, but one thing, was needed to keep the Khitan clearly and distinctly separate from the Europeans, and the most obvious choice was the first thing anyone would see: their appearance. Yet if Agdji had ordered a proclamation stating that Khitans could no longer take Poles as wives, there would be riots.

It was from this quandary that Agdji the Younger's idea of harnessing the heresy of sacral incest came to be. Agdji the Younger skillfully used the transcribing error of the Khitan clerk at the Conclave at Galich to put the words of incest into Agdji the Elder’s mouth, then began to tacitly support the priests who preached that the Poles were inferior, and that Khitan blood must be kept pure by procreating only within one’s own kin-group. In this way he skillfully contextualized the purity of blood as a religious obligation ordained by Agdji, which even the most stubborn Khitan could not disobey.

Agdji the Younger’s betrayal, even though undertaken for what he considered to be noble reasons, would never have been understood by Agdji the Elder. And so the Younger simply did not tell his father anything, hiding that he had taken Cheu’en as a concubine from him and any European that came to court while using his control of access to his father to stonewall those who might betray his deeds, and to make it seem as if the increasing support for purity of blood was coming directly from Huangjin Zhongxin. And it really was not that difficult; Agdji the Elder’s health was growing weaker still, the old Emperor had begun to sleep more and more frequently, and even when he was awake he had difficulty moving about due to muscle weakness, and could no longer read due to his cataracts. De facto, Agdji the Younger took control of the Jin Khidan Zhou by the autumn of 1221, with the execution of Turburur Daudjil earlier in the year the last real independent action which Agdji the Elder undertook as Emperor.

This was not a palace coup, however--at least, not entirely. Agdji the Younger still respected his father immensely, consulted with him constantly, and obeyed whatever orders the Elder relayed to him. And so, when Agdji the Elder ordered at the turn of 1222 that an expedition should be sent east to push the pagan frontier back, the Younger reluctantly agreed. He was displeased that more Europeans were to be added to a realm he was trying to make explicitly Khitan in nature, but he could not deny his father.

Fortuitously, though, the target of the conflict, Antavas is Giech, willingly submitted to vassalage and converted to the faith of Tengri. At first this seemed a disaster to Agdji the Younger, but he realized soon thereafter that the practice of religious incest actually protected his people from intermarriage with Europeans, as through their adherence to Tengri they would be encouraged to marry only within their own kin-group and not with Khitans. The possibility of expansion now seemed viable.

Upon returning to Huangjin Zhongxin from campaign, Agdji the Younger was informed by agents of the court that word had been received that his elder brother, Aerlu’on, had died of old age at his wife’s seat of Brehna, in the Holy Roman Empire.

On the one hand, it was a testament to the vitality of Agdji the Elder that he had lived for so long that his sons were old men dying of natural causes. But on the other, it was a lonely thing for the Emperor to begin losing even more of his family. Although the Huangdi brushed the news off, it was clear to Agdji the Younger that it shook him. Agdji had viewed Aerlu’on as a disappointment, but he had not hated him or been so shamed by him as he had, for example, Ituk. Aerlu’on was his son, and unlike Dashi or Ituk had never spoken a single word of anger or dishonor to his father. His death, exiled and old, troubled the Emperor deeply in the cold, lonely night.

As it did Agdji the Younger, and Ago. Bearing the distinction of being the only two surviving children of Agdji who were full-blooded brothers, they were also the only ones who remembered Aerlu’on well, and had ridden with him in happier days, when he had not been an outcast.

“I do not like it,” Ago admitted. “He was our brother. I… Aerlu’on was not a coward. He should not have been sent away to die alone.”

“No,” Agdji sighed, “he should not have. And now father regrets that he died before they could reconcile.”

Ago looked long into his mare's milk before finally setting it aside. “I do not like,” he said in his slow, methodical way, “when I am reminded that father can make mistakes.”

The favored topic of armchair historians always seems to circle back to 'who is the greatest warrior?' Medievalists are no different, though they do have a unique privilege: every single one of the great warriors in contention lived contemporaneously to one another. Yaerud Agdji of the Liao, Temujin Borjigin the Genghis Khan, and Razin Hunayn the Priest-Hater all operated simultaneously within the first decades of the 13th century, a tremendous coincidence that has even drawn some scholarly attention in an effort to discern why so many warlords rose up in the same period.

Razin is the sole reason why Agdji Huangdi is not regarded by default as the greatest warlord of the age. Hundreds of thousands of hours and thousands of tirades on the internet have been wasted trying to argue for or against one of the two rulers, but the uncomfortable truth is that Agdji was NOT the greater of the two. Although no European would ever admit it, in a strict sense Razin was a more skilled commander than Agdji even when he was not benefitting from the tremendous luck that he was famous for, a practical new-age Mohammed, stampeding across the Middle-East at a pace that made even the Khitan rampage across the steppe appear slow by comparison.

Agdji’s genocides, the benefit of his European credentials making him more visible for Euro-centrist historians, and the massive and direct impact he had both on the steppe specifically and the world more broadly (the advent of the Mongols in particular) tends to give him the edge in the popular dialogue. Indeed, Agdji’s relationship to the Mongol advent often leads to the minority of individuals who argue in favor of Genghis Khan being mocked on image boards for their pick being a horsef*cker who couldn’t do anything without Agdji doing it first. Nevertheless, in this the popular consensus is wrong: Razin was the greater of the two, if only by the narrowest of margins.

The origins of Razin are as unique and fascinating as the history of the Liao. Son of a peasant ruler of Bahrain who had rebelled against the Seljuks in the late 12th century, his father Hunayn had been burned at the stake on orders from Salim Ghatafan, the Seljuk governor of Arabia, in late 1178. Razin was only sixteen years old at the time, and was forced to flee into the desert in order to avoid capture by the Seljuks. While there, in a state of dehydration, he had a vision of Allah where he was told that His chosen representatives, the Fatimid Caliphs, had gone extinct and doomed the world. Allah told Razin that he had been chosen as the last chance to save the decadent world: it was promised that his blood would be transformed into the blood of Mohammed to become the Prophet reborn, if only he could break the Seljuks and receive recognition from the Dar al-Islam as the one true Caliph. The only aid Allah would provide was to tell the boy to “walk west.”

Full of righteous zeal, Razin returned to Qatar, surviving a poisoning attempt and slaying the Seljuk governor while there. He was labeled a heretic and threatened with death every time he spoke of his vision, but every time a pious Muslim attempted to slay him in Allah’s name, he miraculously survived. Eventually a small band--no more than a thousand souls--pledged themselves to him.

For several years Razin’s band acted as bandits, intercepting Seljuk patrols and raiding their trade. Eventually, after years of hard fighting, they had scrounged together enough money to fulfill Razin’s plan. They made their way to Oman, purchased the services of several small transports, and sailed west.

At the time that Razin landed on the East African coast the region was extremely divided, mostly ruled by small tribal lords with no centralized authority, and Islam was virtually unknown outside of the Somali coast, and on the narrow strait across from Mecca. Yet even this bastion had fallen long ago to pagan Sultans who denied the authority of Allah.

Razin landed at Aydhab in 1183 and declared himself Sultan, leading to a protracted campaign against the pagans in the region, against which he proved victorious by 1185, securing the coast. At this time he cast aside his Bahraini heritage and adopted the cosmopolitan culture of the Sudanese coast, a fusion of Nubian, Ethiopian and Arabic cultures, in order to better-organize the peasants he was to rely on for his wars. He then immediately began a constant series of campaigns, expanding both north and south against all of his neighbors. Within a year, Nubia had fallen; within two, the Sennar and Dar al-Fur; within three the remnants of the pagan lords of Malikele Bahr bowed to him, and by the fourth year he was pressing hard against the last Christian holdouts in Ethiopia, and preparing campaigns to bring Somalia under his control. By 1194 he would control all of East Africa north to Aswan, and would be ready to invade Arabia.

Here, the stories of Agdji and Razin converge in a curious way, and none knew the efforts of the other. Agdji had driven the Seljuk Sultan Inal II insane via torture, and in 1193 had invaded the Jand territory on the edge of the steppe, in the process wiping out 12,000 Seljuk souls including the entire personal retinue of the Sultan. Although Razin had grown strong in Africa, it is doubtful that he could have pressed into Arabia without Agdji’s efforts against the Seljuks. With the Shah weakened Razin was able to smash into Arabia, and in a series of several wars over the next two decades would gradually gain a more and more firm grip on the peninsula.

Razin’s goal now, having completely expelled the Seljuks from the peninsula and captured the Holy Cities, was to invade and conquer Jerusalem. He knew that the Dar al-Islam would not acknowledge him as Caliph without his total control of all of the major holy cities of the faith, and this necessarily put him at odds with the Crusader kingdom there which had been re-established just four years earlier at the end of the Fourth Crusade. Ruled by Leonardo d’Appiano, whose wife was Siau Telgen, granddaughter of Agdji, the war against Jerusalem was the first time that the Khitans became aware of the great warrior Razin and this new surge of Islamic power.

Razin’s nature as a Muslim--a religious group which the Khitan universally despised as weak--in addition to his war against a relation of Agdji Huangdi and his pretentions to be a prophet of God, as well as a warrior without equal, set the Khitans against him from the first. Although his realm was yet far away and the Khitans still had no desire to go Crusading, they were not pleased at all that anyone would ever dare to question the supremacy of Agdji Huangdi on the field of battle, or claim his place as a prophet of the one true God. Hatred of the Abbasids and the Seljuks was still much greater among the Khitan, but should the Hunayn dare challenge the Jin Khidan Zhou, the Khitans would welcome their deaths.

But Razin’s actions have had greater geopolitical consequences than simply shaking the balance of power in East Africa and the Arabian peninsula. Arabia was a major source of legitimacy and passive manpower for the Seljuk sultanate, and already denied its immensely eastern trading regions first by Agdji, then by Shulu Cha, then eventually by the Genghis Khan, it rose to the level of being critical. As Razin forced the Seljuks further and further back, they lost more and more legitimacy, and, critically, the funds and manpower they desperately needed in order to resist the Mongol onslaught.

In a palace coup, Shahanshah Karatay, the last Seljuk Emperor, was overthrown by his own Ulema following the devastating defeat which saw him lose central Persia to the Borjigin, to be imprisoned in Baghdad. They raised up his minor son Baytas as the new “Emperor,” but this was a farce even within the Islamic world. Baytas was nothing more than a prisoner in the small fortress of Qadsiya, while the remainder of the rich Iraqi plains began to operate under de facto independence.

The fall of the Seljuk Sultanate was not much-mourned even in the Islamic world, but Ulema’s actions were certainly short-sighted. The unified power of the Seljuk state was the last hope of the Tigris-Euphrates region remaining independent of a hostile religion’s influence, because so divided it was inevitable that either the pagan-Tengri Mongol Khanate or the reinterpretationist Shi’a Hunayn dynasty would move in to exert control of the region. A few short months of freedom were the prize for a certainty of foreign domination.

Which foreign power was to dominate Iraq? This was the only question, and by the end of the month the probabilities shifted dramatically to favor the Borjigin. Although the Mongol Civil War in the west was still ongoing, in the east Temujin’s fourth trueborn son, Chulgetei Borjigin, has successfully broken the walls of Beijing and Kaifeng, capturing the northern capital of China and the Dynastic capital of the Qin. Proclaiming himself Chengzu, the first Emperor of the new Nguan Dynasty, Chulgetei’s first act is to order the execution of Huei’s nephew Jinzong and all of his kin, eradicating all but the most distant scions of the Qin Dynasty and beginning to consolidate Mongol rule.

The successful capture of Kaifeng allows the new Great Khan, Chagatai, to withdraw tens of thousands of his riders from the Middle Kingdom to repurpose them for the civil war against Timur. It is among the worst of the worst-case scenarios: China has fallen, Borjigin pigs sit the Dragon Throne in mockery of the Liao, and now a great wave of reinforcements rides from east to west to bolster the Mongol horde.

The news is not taken well in Huangjin Zhongxin. Out of concern for the strain it would put him under to learn the news Agdji the Younger is able to keep the Huangdi from hearing of the great defeat, but he cannot stop the rest of the court from being made aware. As might be expected, Huei takes the news worst. She vacillates wildly between hysterics, uncontrollable weeping, and fury. She even took to the bottle again for several weeks before her husband could finally wean her off. The last survivor of her house, spared death only through exile, all that is left to her is Agdji and their children. The sole benefit of this great defeat is that the collapse of the Qin ensured that Huei no longer held divided loyalties; the Qin lived on now only in her sons, and so the remainder of her life was dedicated to supporting the Liao, and punishing the Mongols for their great transgression.

The news out of the east grew more grim by the day. Although the Genghis Khan had died earlier in the year (apparently he had become so fat that he could not even mount a horse by the time he expired), his heir Chagatai was a competent ruler. His father had been reckoned by the Khitan as properly dangerous, a skilled commander with a huge horde supporting him, but Chagatai was not some slouch, though he was regarded as only passable by the inflated standards of the Khitan. He was rumored to be barely more skilled in war than Aerlu’on, who had been exiled for martial incompetence, yet it is worth noting that to the Europeans Aerlu’on was regarded as a tactical genius. And Chagatai still had many tens of thousands of riders at his call, though how many exactly it was impossible to tell with the Mongol Civil War still raging; certainly more than double what the Khitan could now raise.

With the collapse of the Qin, like lights being extinguished from the chill of the night the Lady Huei’s network of agents began to go out one by one. Whether betrayed by their supporters in hopes of currying favor with the Mongols or traitors who went over to the Nguan willingly, the great eastern network of contacts and servants was dying, and would soon be entirely wilted. If the Khitan were to make moves while they still had the intelligence to do so safely, it needed to happen now. In the very near future it would no longer be possible to tell when the Mongols were moving toward them, and expending troops on uncertain expeditions might well be a death-sentence.

Excepting Djoborin’s hasty push to take control of Peremyshyl and the brief expedition against Antavas is Giech, the Jin Khidan Zhou had not expanded for over a decade. It was far too little land gained, and although there were good reasons for the delay (mainly the need to consolidate Khitan control of the Polish heartland), the time of caution had ended; it was time to move, or risk death. Agdji the Younger thus dutifully took up his spear and, without instructions from his father, called his personal guard to invade Samogitia in the hopes of securing new resources and men for the coming war.

While Agdji the Younger’s armies were still gathering in preparation for the war for Samogitia, the prince was himself in Huangjin Zhongxin preparing for a great feast and spectacle. On that frigid day, December 20th of 1223, Agdji Huangdi turned eighty years old. He had lived to see four-fifths of a century, and had ruled for almost three-fourths of one.

Prior to the Khitan arrival in Europe, they did not put as much stock in birthdays and age as some other cultures had. To the Khitan, a quintessential steppe people, the four dates that mattered most in their lives were rote, for both men and women: the age of their maturity, the age of their first kill (both beast and man), and their age at the birth of their first son. Usually, beyond those dates, age and birthdays were considered largely irrelevant, and had been even under the Liao in the Middle Kingdom. To count the years of one’s life was only to invite scrutiny suggesting that one was growing older and more frail; accomplishment was the garnish to a Khitan’s life, and was not weighed down with the dim talk of age and the passage of time.

This concept had changed, however, not least because of Agdji himself. Dashi Huangdi had lived to a ripe age himself, passing away at sixty-seven years, but at that time the Khitan had much greater access to advanced medicine than they did now in Poland, and even while availing himself of this Dashi had been old and frail at his passing. Agdji’s continued survival, and indeed even strength, at a much greater age invited great awe and praise. This, combined with the tremendous length of his rule (over sixty-nine years as of that October), led Agdji the Younger to commemorate the tremendously long life and reign of their Emperor.

It would be remiss to claim that the festivities were enjoyed by everyone. Polish and Prussian workers had to be brought in from all around to wait on the Khitans, who of course viewed it as below them to serve themselves, and deadly fights broke out between the two groups. It was not the beginning of animosity between the Poles and Khitans--that had been there from the start--but it was a flashpoint in the memory of those Poles who wished to resist the Khitan yoke. It was becoming more evident by the day that they were to be treated as second-class citizens to these foreign lords, and they had no reason to be loyal to them.

Yet even if the natives of the Jin Khidan Zhou hated the Khitans, they could not help but be overawed by Agdji Huangdi, and were rightly scared of him. The Emperor, for the first time in almost three years, left the Imperial Palace and walked the streets with Agdji the Younger and Ago, though he was forced to wear only robes as he could no longer lift the weight of his armor. Still, he was an imposing figure even with his age, and though he was for all intents blind, Ago was able to skillfully murmur the names and faces of people who came to him so that they could hide the infirmity.

It was at the banquet that evening that it was announced that Agdji was found to have been the oldest noble in Europe, and indeed perhaps all of Eurasia. At this feast, surrounded by members of the Yaerud clan, nobles of the Golden State, and nobility and dignitaries from throughout Europe, Agdji the Younger made the great announcement of the evening.

“Each Emperor found worthy before God,” he proclaimed, “must wear a name of honor befitting their skill and service. The Huangdi does not yet sit in heaven and has yet to earn this name, but we have decided what he shall be called when he passes: we name him Daweizu! He is the Great Mighty Progenitor!”

Temple Names were not meant to be granted in life; they were meant to be given by descendants in recognition of the deeds of their ancestors, if they were worthy. It was for this reason that Tianzuo, the last reigning Liao Emperor in the Middle Kingdom, had been denied a Temple Name, regarded as a disgrace for his cowardice. It was also why Dashi Huangdi had been named Dezong--Virtuous Ancestor. In death, Agdji had absolved his father of the sins which Dashi had never been able to forgive himself for in life.

But the Middle Kingdom was far away. Its traditions no longer applied, at least not so strictly; the Khitan were alone now, with nothing to prove to anyone who knew of what they spoke. The Europeans who sat in the crowd at the feast of Agdji and heard him proclaimed Daweizu did not even understand the words that were spoken; there were none to be offended. It was Huei who suggested the announcement, and Agdji the Younger agreed. He wanted to give something of worth to his father, and this was all he could think to do.

But it was Agdji the Younger, at the last minute, who decided upon the name. Temple Names were always two characters: an adjective and either the more prestigious ‘zu’ or the less prestigious ‘zong’--‘zu’ usually for dynastic founders, and ‘zong’ for all others. The sole exceptions were for those who were regarded as ‘Da’, or Great. These were almost always mythical figures or even prophets, all but never living men. Yet Agdji named his father with three characters, signifying the immensity of his prowess and his importance for the dynasty. He was the birth of a new Liao, and the greatest warrior in the world (at least so far as the Khitan were concerned).

Even if the European nobles there did not understand all that was happening, they understood the tears on the face of the old Emperor, and his shaking hands as he embraced his sons. For the first time in many Khitans’ memory, their stoic Emperor had been moved.

Agdji WAS moved by the show of support from his sons, although in keeping with the precedents of the Middle Kingdom he did not adopt his Temple Name of Daweizu in life. Nevertheless, already certain places were being engraved with the characters which would forever be associated with Agdji in death--most obviously the great sarcophagus at the head of the second of the hundred rows of spears that was to be the burial ground of the Liao Emperors. Second, of course, because the first stood empty: the empty place that should be occupied by the ashes of Dashi Huangdi, kept (if they survived at all) at the base of the great Monument of Dashi in Emil, where the spirit of the Khitan people resided before they found the Mountain of Dreams.

It was well that this moment of levity came when it did, for poor news--though expected--came soon thereafter: the Mongol Civil War was over. After almost four constant years of war, Khan Timur has finally been defeated by his legitimate half-brother Chagatai, and forced to bend his knee. Now undivided and with the support of the stabilizing Nguan Dynasty in the Middle Kingdom, already the great Mongol horde has begun its rampage into the Fertile Crescent, capturing city after city and expanding their zone of control to the borders of the Hunayn Sultanate.

News that year did not improve. Agdji the Younger drastically underestimated the strength of his enemies and the quality of his own levies, and his war effort suffered greatly as a consequence; the pagans broke his army, and even began to rampage into his territories. Although they dared not venture near Huangjin Zhongxin, the heir to the Jin Khidan Zhou’s inability to defeat pagans, much less to defend the capital’s hinterland, was a great disgrace.

In one of the more humiliating moments of his life, even as his father’s health was entering the final stages of decline, for his eighty-first birthday the Emperor called his son to Huangjin Zhongxin and roundly castigated him for his embarrassing failures, demanding that the hinterland be secured and the pagans be defeated lest he “remove the auspices of [his] blessing from [his] shoulders.”

“Are you not,” Agdji the elder rasped, prodding his son on the breast with a bony finger, “the same son whom I entrusted to lead the flank at Tsaparang? Are you not the same son who was at my side at Jiket’i when we broke the back of the Caliph? You have skill, great skill, and you waste it, and embarrass your clan! I lost only one battle in my life, and I was but a boy, your brother Aerlu’on fresh from the womb! I will not stand a son as old as you losing a whole war to men who still live in mud holes and roll on the floor with pigs!” The old man co*cked a blind eye at his son, as if daring him to challenge his words.

But of course, Agdji the Younger did not. If Agdji the Elder decided to pass his blessing on to Ago to rule, Agdji would acquiesce to his wishes--because he would be correct. Agdji son-of-Agdji would have failed.

On the 24th of January, 1225, the realm of Leonardo II of Acre falls to Sultan Razin Hunayn, securing his power in the Levant and putting him one step closer to being able to legitimately claim the Caliphate and proclaim himself Mohammed reborn. Less than five years after the conclusion of the Fourth Crusade, the loss of Jerusalem is a significant blow to Christendom, which turns inward for a time questioning the future of Crusading and the hopes of a Christian Holy Land.

Despite his defeat, Leonardo II is permitted to remain free--if closely watched--as a vassal of Razin. It is this freedom which allows his wife, Siau Telgen, to write a letter to her grandfather Agdji, warning him of the great threat posed by the Sultan and the massive expansion into Tigris-Euphrates valley that the Mongols were presently undertaking.

Agdji the Younger, with the aid of loyal court officials in Huangjin Zhongxin, was able to control access and information available to the Emperor even when he was away, as he was in the beginning of 1225 on his campaign against the Lietuvai. Yet he had left no orders against reading letters from Jerusalem, merely spy reports and other missives that warned of the east. Thus, when the letter arrived in June of 1225, none of the officials thought better of reading it to the Emperor.

By the time the court scribe who was reading the letter to Agdji realized its contents it was already too late. The old Emperor was blanched of color, and although the scribe attempted to cease reading many times, Agdji furiously bade him to read on. When it came to the paragraphs detailing the Islamic resurgence and the Mongol expansion into the old Seljuk heartland, Agdji sprung to his feet.

“I am needed!” he cried. “What has my son done; where is he! What has my infirmity permitted, how greatly we have failed to check the barbarians. Bring me my horse, I mu… I… I am--” and just as suddenly as he had jumped forward, he collapsed limply.

This fate was precisely what Agdji the Younger had feared: strain from the news of how poorly matters were proceeding in the rest of the world causing the aged Huangdi to overexert himself at an age where his body could no longer take the strain. At eighty-one Agdji the Elder could barely manage to spring up from his seat without overexerting himself, entirely aside from the great mental strain which news of the Christian setbacks and Mongol victories caused him. In his fury over his son’s hiding information from him and his overexertion of his body, the old man suffered a serious heart attack.

The members of the court, fearing execution by Agdji the Younger should they tell him the truth about how the old man had become weakened, hid the information from him, telling him only that his father had taken gravely ill. The younger man abandoned the front immediately and raced back to Huangjin Zhongxin, but he arrived a day too late. Amidst a week of thunderous rain that poured down on the city, the last Dragon of the Liao to set foot in the Middle Kingdom passed from this earth at eighty-one years of age. In the streets, criers called out “Daweizu! Daweizu!” mournfully, announcing to all those who did not know that Agdji the Destroyer had taken up his Temple Name, passing into the heavens.

On July 3rd, 1225, he who was born Yaerud Agdji on the 20th of December of the year 1143, second son of Yaerud Dashi, who had been invested with the Mandate of Heaven at the age of ten and taking the regnal name of Xuxing, and who ruled in might and majesty for seventy-one years, passed into the beyond and became as proclaimed by his son and heir Yaerud Agdji II ‘Daweizu,’ Great Mighty Progenitor of the Liao Dynasty. His is the first row of spears in the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand.

What can be said of Yaerud Agdji the First? Where now are the Oghuz and the Qirghiz; the Qarluq and the Qazar; the Alan and the Adyghe; the Hvanmai? All are gone, never to be seen again. How far away could be heard the lamentations of the Bolghar and the Bashqurd; the Qipchaq and the Turkmen? They lived, but in vastly reduced numbers, pushed aside as if by giants, exiled to marginal lands before the Khitan onslaught. Morris Rossabi, one of the foremost scholars of the Khitans in the nomadic period, once called Agdji’s greatest impact “the indelible eradication of so many cultures that we never knew, passed down to us only as worn characters on the stele erected to praise their deaths.” This is, perhaps, something of an exaggeration; Agdji’s impact on the world clearly extended far beyond his nigh-genocidal drive westward. Still, it is emblematic of Agdji’s life in a way that little else is.

No serious historian would ever argue that Agdji was an archetypical 'good' ruler. He was single-minded, which alone was no sin, yet when combined with his vindictive nature it made him almost sociopathic in his brutality when slighted--or even simply when he viewed unrestricted violence as beneficial. This was the man who organized a nomadic empire that was literally built entirely on organized, systemic pillaging, the execution of acultural males, and the rape of the remainder to produce a population boom, a matter of organization that took the cold cunning that Agdji was known for, but which was unpalatable even to his sons. If one asked a Khitan in 1225 what Agdji’s greatest successes were, they would either have listed one of his many battles--one of the three Battles of Kashgar, or the Battle of Tsaparang, Jiket’i, or Ustrushama--or his execution of Turburur Daudjil at the age of seventy-nine, or the torture of the Abbasid Caliph, or the pacification of Poland. In that list, no great policy, law, or cultural renaissance would be mentioned--because there were none.

In life, Agdji was known as the Destroyer; in death, he was to be known as the Bringer of Change. But Agdji did not bring change himself so often as he set up the conditions for it.

Agdji was not the type of ruler who could lead his people without violence. This is not to say that Agdji was not a skilled ruler when he needed to be--given enough time and preparation, as he had prior to the Conclave at Galich, he was able to awe those around him with his eloquence and intelligent arguments. It should be forgotten by none that the Emperor was an insightful man, regardless of his appearance. But it was not Agdji’s inclination to operate in such a way, and his mind rebelled against it. He could not master himself to involve himself in anything other than war for long, and so the realm suffered. Permitting Djoborin to gain a foothold in Galich, devolving the granting of the Mandate of Heaven to selection by consensus, and isolating himself in Huangjin Zhongxin while allowing Agdji the Younger to preach the religion of sacral incest are but a few of the great oversights of Agdji’s later reign.

So what was Agdji then, if not a good ruler? In this, too, scholars are largely in agreement: for the Khitan, Agdji was exactly the right man at exactly the right time. Whatever his faults, whatever his failures, Daweizu had something that not even Razin Hunayn had: the capacity to do anything, to the most grievous extreme of brutality, with the absolute support of everyone around him. The Khitans’ loyalty to Agdji was cultish, with proven descendants of Agdji often enjoying nigh-unquestioned obedience even centuries later. When almost all of the Khitans who made it to Poland were alive solely because of Agdji’s victories, and with his martial prowess to forge the new Khitan into a force unified by shared struggle, it’s little surprise that none would have ever dared to question him. He became to the Khitan what he wished Father Dashi would have been: the symbol of unity.

It was this fierce loyalty which allowed Agdji to drive the new Khitan across the steppe; which allowed him to keep them together as the empire tumultuously broke apart behind them (even when it was due to his own incompetence); and which allowed him to stabilize the initial years of the Jin Khidan Zhou by virtue of his unquestionable authority. Whenever he made mistakes, his accomplishments, his people’s love for him, let him recover from them and left his reputation largely untarnished. The greatest example of this is, of course, the Parting of the Spears: turning the loss of an entire empire from a defeat into a glorious victory of the new Khitan. Agdji alone could have convinced his riders of such a thing.

But there was a consequence to such overwhelming authority: isolation. For most of his life Agdji was an idea, a symbol, because if he had been a man he would have been fallible, and of this he was terrified. What would happen if he could not control his family--would he be forced to start killing them like his father had killed Belbun? For the whole of his life Agdji never forgot the scarred face of his father, scars he had clawed into his own flesh in his madness after killing his own child. Agdji never showed fear to anyone, but in the quiet of night it was of this he was petrified.

Even to his own he could not show weakness. Whenever he had, he had been betrayed: betrayed by his father’s wife Tabuyen; betrayed by his eldest sister Ordelhan (who had raised him as a mother!) when she conspired with his own wife Kyi to kill his son Aerlu’on; and finally betrayed by an endless stream of concubines who plotted and schemed and conspired to kill one another, and his children. In the end, even his own sons did betray him: Ituk abandoned the host, and Djoborin dared to question his father. He could never show weakness, never show his own feelings, or he would be ripped apart by the dogs.

If ever an example of such were needed, Agdji is the perfect study of a man who has everything, yet is utterly unhappy. Agdji’s last day of real joy, excepting his proclamation as Daweizu, occurred on the 28th of May 1197, when he knelt before the Mountain of Dreams and fulfilled the hopes of his father. Because in all his years, he was never as close to anyone as he was to the man he lost when he was only ten years old, the only man he could ever be himself with.

This, then, was the life of Daweizu: with an earnest spirit of self-sacrifice he undertook to become a symbol, suffering the isolation and sorrow of that choice, and with that power he broke the shackles of the mind that held the Khitan in the east; drove them like a master driving his slave from east to west; and, finally, gave them a land and a faith which would shelter them, something they had never before had--for even in the Middle Kingdom, the steppe had been their home, and the cities of their lands and the faith of their Buddha but things of pleasure and idle fascination. Agdji’s role was not to bring change, though this is how the Khitans refer to him. In truth, Agdji’s role was to break the Khitan of their past, culling everything that they were and making them like clay, vulnerable to the changes which Dashi believed they must undergo. But Agdji was not the man to shape that clay; for all of his skill, that power was not given to him.

Yaerud Agdji II, in accordance with the wishes of the departed Daweizu, was unanimously elected as the bearer of the Mandate of Heaven later that year. He chooses for his era name Shaoxing, meaning “inheriting the imperial task and resurging to prosperity.” Consciously or not, Agdji II knows that the task of shaping the clay has, in some form, fallen to him. Though he comes to the throne already an old man, he has chosen for himself a name that makes it clear that he will attempt to make some mark of his own upon the Khitan in what time remains to him.

Chapter 12: Shaoxing

Chapter Text

Even at the best of times, it is never easy for a son to bury their father. For Agdji II, it was torture to bury Daweizu. The tremendous age and long rule of Agdji I had great consequences for his eldest sons--none of them had ever lived without the presence and guiding hand of their father, for good or for ill. Most men became their own in the harsh 13th century no later than perhaps forty years of age, and often significantly sooner. Yet Agdji II, fresh in his grief, had come into his own at the advanced age of 53, already an old man and used to being guided in his decisions by his eponymous sire, the only parent that Agdji had ever truly known. Yet now he was gone, and just as suddenly, it seemed, Agdji was alone as the eldest of the surviving sons of Daweizu, and the head of the Liao. All of the decisions fell entirely on him, as they never had before.

Worse still were the circ*mstances of his ascension. The long war with the Lietuvai had drained Agdji II’s coffers, and Daweizu, due to his great building projects and limited demesne, had few funds to begin with--most of what little he did have was divided among his many children, according to Khitan custom, leaving Agdji II with a paltry sum. The need to bury Daweizu in splendor was a given, but there were not the funds to do it, especially after Agdji II began his reign ignobly by paying off the Lietuvai so that he might travel to Galich for the burial.

Although the addition of the great city of Huangjin Zhongxin--the only truly-developed center of population in the entire sprawling Jin Khidan Zhou--to Agdji's demesne greatly improved his income relative to the paucity he had been able to extract from the farmlands of its surrounds, it did nothing to improve the state's current assets. The new Huangdi was barely solvent, lacking funds to finance the bribe to the Lietuvai, much less Daweizu’s great burial and his own coronal ceremonies. Burying Daweizu with all speed was an unavoidable necessity, and so Agdji borrowed the money from merchants, intending to pass the cost on to his vassals.

What was to happen should have been obvious to Agdji immediately, and indeed Huei attempted to warn him, but so deep in his grief was he that he did not pay her heed, nor consider alternatives. Agdji announced the day after returning to Huangjin Zhongxin a great tithe for the burial of Daweizu, as well as a summons to the foot of the great Mountain of Dreams, where the still-unfinished mausoleum of the Khitan Emperors was being raised, to attend to the burial of the last Dragon of the East.

Agdji, like his father, had no skills in rule; his place was on a horse’s back, where he had been raised and where he had learned the art of war from one of the greatest warlords of the age. Agdji was cursed with his namesake’s strengths and shortcomings both: unparalleled in war, yet incompetent on the throne. He would soon learn the first of the many lessons to come.

Yet it seemed at first that nothing ill would occur. The money for the burial arrived speedily, and the morning of the 13th of July, the date of Daweizu’s burial, dawned hot and humid but with clear skies, allowing the palanquin carrying the body of the great Emperor to be solemnly carried along the trail from the village of Mikulin to the fields surrounding Dolina at the base of the Mountain of Dreams, where the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand was being raised.

The great complex was not yet completed, but its basic structure ran thus: inside richly-ornamented walls, the exterior of which was adorned with stone reliefs that told of the history of the Liao, a complex of four buildings sat.

Directly inside the sole gate was a church, small at the moment but with great room within the massive complex to be expanded. It was thought that the Imperial ancestors of the Khitan people would someday be beseeched for aid within its halls, and prayers for their well-being and the well-being of the Liao would be offered up. Although the Khitan had no formal church hierarchy, de facto the bishop of this small church was the most prestigious and influential clergyman in the entire Jin Khidan Zhou.

In the southwestern corner of the complex, almost tucked away from sight, a small Buddhist temple had been raised, overseen by the few remaining Khitan who were still adherents of the Buddha, permitted to continue living in order to tend to the shrine of Dashi Huangdi in the west.

To the north there was a long hall, plain at the moment but, like the church, with great room to grow and be more richly decorated. Closed at points for decades at a time, the hall existed only to be opened when an Emperor passed on, to host the funeral party of the departed following the mass and burial, who would drink and eat in honor of their lost Emperor.

Finally and most impressively of all was the great, square pavilion in the center of the complex. Here was the exact spot where, after a night of despair, Daweizu was brought back to himself by the Lady Huei, and gave his great speech proclaiming that the Khitan spears should be struck to the earth, a martial past parted with--though not forgotten--in the name of a new home and a nobler destiny. One hundred rows one hundred deep, arrow-straight, the spears of the Khitans were hemmed in now with the pavilion, which was cunningly designed so that a large, thick leather roof could be extended or retracted at need, such that the field of spears could be opened to the sun on clear days, and shielded from rain or snow in poor weather.

Surrounding the field of spears, the pavilion expanded outward into a great complex of a hundred halls and chambers, each intended to be dedicated to the artefacts of one of the reigning emperors of the Liao, predicted to last for one hundred generations. Ninety-eight of these doors were locked, with only two opened: the first two chambers to the northeast, the chambers of Dashi Huangdi and Daweizu, which contained trinkets, tomes and testimonies of their lives and reigns.

Finally, to the west of the rows of spears, abutting the rear wall of the complex closest to the Mountain of Dreams, there were one hundred stone sarcophagi, one sitting at the head of each row of spears. These were the tombs of the Liao, one for each of her prophesied rulers. Ninety-eight of the tombs here sat unornamented, but the first two to the south did not: the southernmost, at the head of the very first line of spears and unbounded to its left (at the head of what some Khitan called the "Ghost Row") though it lie empty, had sitting atop it the helm of Dashi, the last remnant of him carried from the east. The second tomb, at the head of the first full row of spears, had affixed to it the sun-bleached head of Daina Kesgaila, murderer of Yaerud Toqsoba, son of Daweizu--and it was here that he would be lain to rest.

It was midafternoon by the time Daweizu’s funeral procession reached the gates of the Mausoleum, though the fortuitous time of year ensured the sun still rode high in the sky. While many of the tens of thousands who had followed their Emperor on his final journey had stopped either at the town of Mikulin or city of Dolina, the thousands of commoners who had travelled all the way to the complex with the funeral procession were left outside its walls, as only the nobility and foreign dignitaries were permitted within. The palanquin of the Emperor was carried into the church, where the Bishop of the complex, called Bug, led the (tightly-packed) mourners in the Khitans’ syncretic Christian burial mass.

After this Daweizu’s body, wrapped loosely in a silken burial shroud, was removed from the palanquin and placed upon a simple stretcher carried by his two eldest sons, Agdji in front and Ago in the rear. They led the procession between the first and second row of spears with their wives behind them, followed in line in order of age by such of their siblings who still lived in this part of the world and their spouses, then the grandsons and granddaughters of Daweizu, then the more distant members of the Yaerud, then other Khitan nobility and, finally, the foreigners.

At the western end of the row, Agdji and Ago alone ascended the few steps to the platform upon which their father’s sarcophagus stood. Laying his stretcher down gently they, with their own hands, heaved open the heavy stone lid, and taking their father in their arms for the last time, lay his body down gently in the smooth tomb before sealing him away to his rest.

On their exit, the line held the same order, but now passed between the second and third row of spears. Agdji II would not pass those spears again in life, and would only see them once more as he was carried between them after his own death, to be laid to eternal rest in the third sarcophagus, which was his own.

This funerary ceremony had been planned long in advance, and to some extent with the input of Daweizu himself. When the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand was being constructed, originally the builders believed that the Liao would be cremated, as Dashi himself had been, and intended to build the complex to support this. Yet Daweizu vetoed this as being too akin to Buddhist practices, and when the Berkutchi suggested that the Liao return to sky burials, the entire Yaerud nobility balked at what would invariably be viewed as a barbaric practice by the Europeans. And so it was decided that they would largely adhere to European precedents, with a funerary mass and the preservation of the bodies of their departed lords, but with ceremony and circ*mstance that was distinctly Khitan. Perhaps the most Khitan-like of all of these ceremonies was the funerary feast.

Following the burial of Daweizu, Agdji and Ago briefly washed themselves and changed their clothing, then led the first ever unlocking of the funeral-house, the inside of which featured dozens of tables filled to the point of buckling with food and drink. Here the Khitan would toast the life of their Emperor, and sing songs and tell tales of his accomplishments well into the night, before finally proclaiming the next bearer of the Mandate of Heaven.

Few eyes in this great hall were dry as they remembered the life of Daweizu. Yet one alone never wept: Djoborin. As Daweizu himself had warned, Djoborin had grown cautious and cunning following his humiliation. He had amassed a group of nobles loyal to him, and, unbeknownst to the mourning Agdji and Ago, spent almost the whole evening not touching drink or food, but whispering in the ears of the nobles surrounding him, speaking of how little Agdji II could be respected, he who could not even pay for the funeral of the great Daweizu!

At the end of the feast, in the small hours of the morning with the sky just beginning to brighten as the dawn approached in the east, the tables had been all but emptied and the feast of Daweizu was concluded. What few foreigners had not already left were ushered out of the complex, leaving only the Khitan nobility--for only they could decide upon the Mandate, or hear the deliberations surrounding it.

“My father,” Agdji II began softly, “had a clear goal and intent for the throne of our realm. It was he who named me his successor, and he also who named DILUGUIN,” he suddenly cried, nodding to his son at his right, “to succeed me. Who are any of us to stand against the will of the man by whose might we stand here? I stand for Diluguin!”

“I accept the honor,” Diluguin bowed to his father, and cast his own vote for himself as a landholder.

“I too stand for my nephew!” Ago announced, stepping forward.

Yet there was an unexpected silence following Ago’s support, and Agdji realized too late that something had happened. When Djoborin stepped forward he felt a cold anger and fear seize him, yet as his smirking half-brother spoke the name on his lips, all he felt was shock.

“I stand for Ago,” Djoborin said softly. A swell of nobles walked forward with him: Yaerud Biaen of Kiev, called the Beautiful; Siau Uldjin; Yaerud Ituk of Belz; Purgyal Kunga; Dorhan of Pinsk; Sabon of Sieradz--even Asalup Daerqa, son of Sugr. The vote was clear: at eight to three, Ago was to bear the Mandate.

Agdji was not stupid. He saw what Djoborin had done. If Ago, brother of Agdji, could be Emperor in contravention of the wishes of Daweizu, why not could Djoborin, brother of both, also be Emperor? Djoborin had just cast the first blow of a very, very long fight.

Even as Ago squared himself to protest, his elder brother laid a hand on his shoulder, and, turning, bowed to him. “For the sake of unity, I withdraw my support for Diluguin,” he intoned. “Ago will bear the Mandate upon my death with unanimity.”

Diluguin slowly bowed himself, clearly confused about what was happening. But Ago, slower than most, did not yet see it at all.

“There is no unanimity!” he cried. “It cannot be unanimous if I don’t accept it myself! I deny it, I deny the Mandate; I do not want it.”

“If you deny it,” Djoborin said softly, circling as if his elder brother were prey, “then the Liao are broken. We are empowered to determine the bearer of the Mandate, by the will of Daweizu, and to pass Heaven’s grace on to them. If you deny this gift, then our selection will have failed, and Heaven’s grace will leave us. You we elect to hold it, and if you refuse it, it is refused for all; the Mandated rulers will end.”

Ago’s eyes widened, and he looked almost pitifully at Agdji for aid. But there was no aid to be had--the Emperor saw Djoborin’s whole plan, now. Speaking ill of Agdji due to his inability to pay for Daweizu's burial, Djoborin had cast into doubt the Huangdi's capabilities and decision-making, and thus implicitly his selection of Diluguin as a successor. Then he had spoken in favor of Ago, a safe and respectable choice, for Ago was a great man and able warrior, loved by everyone. Yet there was but one issue: Ago was humble, and had not an inch of ambition in him. He wished for no power, and Djoborin knew this. By raising Ago up he not only strengthened his own future claim, but left open the possibility that Ago might become nothing more than a puppet-Emperor to him, permitting him to shut Diluguin out of the succession entirely.

When no aid came to Ago’s searching eyes, his shoulders slumped in defeat. “I concede,” he said sorrowfully. “I will accept the Mandate.”

As Agdji rode back to Huangjin Zhongxin, the laughing eyes of Djoborin followed him. He immediately raised up his third son Qutug as Lord of Suduva, in preparation of the war that was to come.

Agdji spent months brooding about Djoborin, hardly attending to the realm. As he considered the matter longer and longer, he came to the unpleasant conclusion that Djoborin’s plan was even more cunning than he had initially given him credit for. Before Daweizu’s death Djoborin had been betrothed to Ago’s second daughter Uroen, a move that would soon prevent Ago from moving against him, and showed clearly that Djoborin had been planning this coup for some time. Djoborin, like a true strategist, had backed both Agdji and Ago into a corner before even arriving at the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand, knowing that Ago could not touch him nor decline the Mandate without breaking the peace and allowing him to move openly, nor could Agdji fail to endorse Ago’s election without splitting the vote, something which had as yet not occurred: both Daweizu and Agdji himself had been unanimously proclaimed Huangdi. To have a split vote would have opened the path for civil war, and thus Djoborin knew all he needed was a bare majority to force Agdji’s hand.

Yet most disturbingly, it occurred to the Huangdi that Djoborin had almost certainly intended the move to specifically drive a wedge between himself and Ago. And why not--Ago had been staunchly loyal to Agdji prior to the vote, but could Agdji trust him when he stood against his son’s rightful rule? Here alone did Djoborin make a mistake, and in so doing proved that he was not infallible, merely patient and cunning. Agdji and Ago were the last full-blood brothers born of Daweizu still living, and had each been the firmest pillars of the other’s life. Neither would ever doubt the other.

This single lapse gave Agdji hope. Djoborin was not perfect, and even now must be wondering if his poisonous plans were festering as he hoped. If Agdji could show that they were not and attempt to sway his loyalty to adhere to the wishes of Daweizu, Djoborin might yet prove an asset, not an enemy.

Yet, predictably, Djoborin frustrated any attempts at reconciliation. His power and influence within the realm relied upon standing against the continuity of power between Daweizu and the line of Agdji the Younger, and though he could not threaten Agdji II’s power directly or too closely insult him or his sons--to do so would be a contravention of Daweizu’s wisdom, a mistake he realized would probably quite literally be fatal for him--he could, and did, criticize Agdji II’s decisions, and in so doing make it clear that he stood in opposition to the established order, which brought him a surprising amount of support. All he needed to do in order to maintain this support was provide Agdji with nothing more than the bare minimum of required deference, to keep the loyalist hawks off of his back while, slowly, twisting the poisoned knife of mistrust behind Agdji’s back.

A series of minor Polish insurrections within the Krakow territory, although quickly put down, was a perfect opportunity for Djoborin to pounce. An ‘anonymous’ letter sent to many of the realm’s great landholders pointed out that not only did Agdji II fail to pay for the funeral of Daweizu with his own funds, being forced to levy them from his vassals, these levies had largely been passed on to the second-class Polish citizens of the realm, a “mistake which could… sow dissent among the noble Poles and cause them to move against the rightful succession of Emperors.” It was both a criticism of how Agdji II had handled the situation and a veiled threat about Polish loyalties.

Agdji was beyond frustration at the move, moreso because, again, his hands were tied: he could not directly confront Djoborin without entirely shattering the illusion of peace and giving his young brother license to move in an openly disloyal manner. And Agdji II, like his father before him, usually submerged his anger in the flesh of his women.

Agdji II always strove to emulate his father, but Agdji’s vision of what his father was actually like was seen through a glass darkly: none truly knew Agdji the Elder, not even the man himself. His life had been a kaleidoscope of masks, further complicated by his frequent tendency to undertake actions he did not personally relish, but believed were necessary for the survival of the Khitan. Only two things about Agdji the Elder were truly clear enough to be said with certainty: he was violently cruel when pressed, and he enjoyed sharing the beds of many women, though he hated the women themselves. Daweizu’s lust soon made sense to Agdji II, who, free of any other vices, soon found that lechery was one of the few ways he might relieve some of the burdens of rule--not that he was much more of an active ruler than his father was.

Of course, Agdji II’s particular perversions, as well as his curious ideas about Khitan purity and the maintenance of their physical difference from Europeans, had led him to twist his father’s words at the Conclave of Galich into a commandment to practice incest. With his wife Huei now aged and well past the age of childbearing, Agdji now more often than not shared his bed with his own daughter Cheu’en, or his brother Ago’s eldest daughter, his niece Sabo.

It is not clear what Huei’s exact thoughts were regarding Agdji’s ideas of Khitan 'preservationism,' though it was known that she at least tolerated them. Although history was not kind to Huei, it remembers that she and Agdji were close friends, but that there was little romantic attraction between them. These same histories write on the romance between Agdji and his daughter Cheu’en at great and flowery length, even those that denounce Khitan sacral incest, and perhaps this is why Huei tolerated it: despite the perverse nature of the unions, it was what her husband and daughter truly wished. Certainly his kin did not begrudge bearing the Huangdi children, both Cheu'en and Sabo having given him two in the prior six years, little Diamtshan being but the most recent.

But more cynical history notes that, however much in love Agdji and Cheu'en may have been, Huei was far too politic to permit something so perverse without extracting a price. It was not long after little Diamtshan was born that an edict was promulgated from Huangjin Zhongxin fully restoring "rider's rights" to the women of the Jin Khidan Zhou, reversing the trend of masculine exclusivity among the Khitans' military hosts. Many Khitan at the time read Huei's involvement into the situation, and indeed they were quite correct--she was not tolerant of her father-in-law's exclusion of women from what had previously a quite egalitarian society, and the repudiation of Daweizu's restrictions towards women was the price of her tolerating her husband's perverse desires.

As her involvement in the "Rider's Edict" suggests, Huei was likely open to allowing Agdji to do as he wished because, when he was allowed to exercise his discomforting preferences, he was placid. And when he was placid, he was starkly open to suggestion.

Agdji had spent his entire life in his father’s shadow, obeying his father’s commands. Even when he seized effective control of the Jin Khidan Zhou in the final years of his father’s reign, it was only to protect his father from the ill news from the east; he still obeyed the wishes of the elder Yaerud, meaning that he rarely made decisions wholly on his own. He was not a mercurial man, yet he lacked the ability to undertake decisive action without constantly seeking validation, and decisiveness was a necessity in this most dangerous of times for the realm, with Djoborin all but openly pushing the kingdom toward civil war. Huei was the solution to this issue.

To an extent, Daweizu had intended this. When he called upon the Qin Emperor Yangzong to supply him with a daughter, it was with the intent that she would be part of the process of change with which Agdji the Elder had been so obsessed: after settling, a child of the Middle Kingdom itself would be critical to re-opening the Khitans to the Sinic culture which he knew would be all but entirely lost on the death-march west. Although he had never expressed such an intention to Huei, she shared her departed father-in-law’s goals: to re-Sinicize the Khitans as part of the process of bringing them away from barbarism and back to civilization.

History, particularly Khitan history, views Huei almost as a demiurge. The “harlot of the East” is among the more polite names for her, and it is often charged--correctly--that she was more of the power behind Agdji II’s throne than Agdji himself was. But, though Khitan historians disdain the influence of a Han woman on a Liao Emperor, it was a lucky thing indeed that Huei was there. Agdji was no match for Djoborin, but Huei, at times, was.

A coronation was critical for the stability of Agdji II’s rule. Even if his assembled vassals had acknowledged his rule at the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand, and despite the cost being great, Huei insisted.

“Your lord father was crowned in the style of Europe,” Huei had argued with her husband. “That alone means that you must be crowned also, or you will be seen as less than him.”

“I AM less than him” Agdji sighed. It was self-pitying, but Huei was used to it, and it came from a place of respect for his father--she tolerated it. But she didn’t let up.

"Your reign, not yourself, will be seen as less," she pressed. “For the sake of Diluguin, you cannot forego any ceremony which will advance his strength, and challenge Djoborin’s. To be crowned not in a European ceremony but an eastern one will lend further strength to your claim, and permit you to announce a mode of Imperial address.”

Agdji arched a thick brow. “What do you want from me, Huei? I have already proclaimed myself Shaoxing.”

“It is not about your Era Name,” she smiled slyly. “It’s about sending a message.”

And when Agdji heard her plan, he too smiled, a heartfelt yearning to see Djoborin’s face when the coronation took place.

As in Daweizu’s ceremony so many years before, all of the great vassals of the realm were summoned to Huangjin Zhongxin to bow before the Huangdi while he reposed upon his throne. Unlike Daweizu’s ceremony, however, at Huei’s suggestion Agdji insisted upon many eastern conventions: robes rather than armor were required, and so too was the much more humiliating kowtow, whereas Agdji the Elder had tolerated simple bows.

Djoborin thought the kowtow itself was the insult at first, and so bowed in his smirking manner, amused at what he saw as the pathetic attempt to insult him. Yet he was soon surprised.

As the last of the lords of the realm finished the nine knocks of his head against the smooth paneled floor before Agdji II’s throne, Ago stood from his brother’s side, where he had sat on a lowered dais as the successor to the Mandate, and proclaimed: “Hail he who is Shaoxing, the Agdji Huangdi, Agdji son of Agdji!”

THE Agdji Huangdi. Agdji Huangdi was to be his mode of address.

The reasons were multitudinous, but it was mostly in response to Daweizu’s choice of address. He had always gone simply by Agdji, requiring none of his men to ever address him as Huangdi save in formal ceremonies--for a man who ruled by charisma, to do anything else would have weakened his hold on his men; the riders of his host had to feel a personal connection to him, above and beyond his inborn right to rule. Yet this led to a tendency among the Khitan to have little respect for the titles of their rulers, and little desire to refer to them by anything other than their given names.

The title of Agdji Huangdi was the chosen solution. Not only was it a hearkening-back to Daweizu, it was also Agdji’s own name. It was a way to seem as if Agdji was not asking for anything more than that his vassals add “Emperor” after his name, yet in reality it was more indeed: a way of twisting his name into a formal title, the beginning of the resurgence of Imperial prestige. But most importantly for Agdji and Diluguin, it was an overt reminder that Agdji son-of-Agdji was Emperor of the chosen line of descent, everything Djoborin was not.

For the first time, Agdji had the pleasure of seeing the smug smirk slide from Djoborin’s face as the assembled vassals cried out “Hail the Agdji Huangdi!”

Djoborin was smart enough to see what had happened immediately: in his arrogance he had been outmaneuvered, trapped in the same way he had trapped Agdji and Ago at the Mausoleum. None of the assembled vassals could deny a decree with the support of both the sitting Emperor and his successor. If he refused to acknowledge the title of Agdji Huangdi, he would be a traitor and sent to the noose--and so he was forced to pay homage in the name of Agdji Huangdi, a clear rebuke of his own claim. It was now Agdji’s turn to smirk smugly, and Djoborin’s to gnash his teeth.

“Do not goad him over-much,” Huei whispered from behind her husband’s throne. “We have struck a blow, but this is not victory. He will be more careful now. Before he thought you harmless and easily out-maneuvered, but he sees better. He will not make the mistake of underestimating you again, nor will it be so easy to catch him in a trap in the future.”

Indeed, Huei’s words were prophetic, for Djoborin did not even wait until the end of the day to strike back against Agdji. He had long tormented his elder brother Ituk, who ruled in Belz and held the territory of Peremyshl which he coveted, driving him mad with his constant, cruel prodding. He inflamed this insanity at the feast after the coronation, causing Ituk to launch into a tirade against Agdji, forcing him to be removed from the hall and embarrassing Agdji greatly.

Djoborin’s smirk was back as he locked eyes with his eldest living brother. He was not beaten, nor cowed. The struggle continued.

Another strike in favor of Agdji and his heirs was soon to be had, as Yaerud Moshan was born in November of that year to his heir Diluguin’s wife Milda, a Lietuvai taken on one of the eastern raids where Diluguin served as a flank commander for his father. Moshan’s birth ensured that Diluguin could not simply be assassinated by Djoborin, and in so doing eliminate his line.

Or a strike in Agdji's favor it SHOULD have been. Yet Moshan, though it would be discerned as he aged that he had some of the intellect of his father, was born a sickly dwarf. While dwarfism was seen as a quaint trait in Europe, among the Khitan it was the greatest humiliation, and virtually precluded one from taking the throne: if one could not ride, one could not rule.

Yet worst of all, Moshan had ivory skin, almost as pale as his mother.

“His deformities are a result of your disobedience of the wishes of Daweizu,” Agdji chastised his son harshly. “We are to remain united in blood with our own! If you want to take a Lithuanian, or a Pole, or a Greek to your bed, what should I care? But to make her your wife, and to legitimize her children, has brought about this shameful state! He is not akin to us.”

At 23, Diluguin was too young to know that his father was lying through his teeth; he did not know of his father's manipulation of the kinship clause, and those of Daweizu's children who could have told him the truth either shared his father's perversions or were too loyal to him, like Ago, to reveal his dishonor. Yet, though Diluguin loved his father, he did not bend.

Agdji II had lived a life enslaved to the wishes of his father, and what Khitan had not? The 15,000 Khitan who were alive when Daweizu had taken the throne--they alone could claim that they did not owe the debt of existence to Agdji the elder. To all the rest, all four hundred thousand riders who lived when the Second Liao Empire collapsed, to all those men and women begot of battle, of pillage and of rape, Daweizu was their father: he created them, and to him was given the right to dispense with them as he wished. Agdji the Younger was one of those who owed his life to his father, and who viewed it as his father's to do with as he wished. Undoubtedly so too had Aerlu'on, who was all but cast out of the Khitan entirely, and yet viewed it as a price which he MUST pay--Daweizu had demanded it, and Aerlu'on's life was his.

But Agdji II was not Daweizu. Even with the shadow of Daweizu's words at his back, he was not all to the Khitan; he was the son of that all-encompassing being, a reed used to bending to the great wind of his father's will. And before this trembling reed was the heir chosen by Daweizu, a boy at the time that his grandfather had not known, and yet had he lived long enough to have seen him as a man, would have felt vindicated in his selection. For Diluguin son of Agdji was the first Khitan of the royal house who was not a broken thing, the first Khitan who was not his father's, or his grandfather's, or even a slave to the memory of the past that was.

Diluguin was simply a man. A father of a child he loved, with no regard for his deformity, whom he would stare down death on behalf of. Neither the realm, nor his blood, nor his title mattered in the face of the little boy.

“He is my SON,” Diluguin fired back at his father. “He is the blood of my blood, and the blood of yours, admitted or not. I will not apologize for him, or his mother. I will marry into the blood of the east next, as Daweizu wished, but I will not disown Moshan. I chose his mother, and I chose that she should bear him; I will not renege him. He is my choice.”

“He is a bastardization of our blood!” Agdji snarled.

“So too, then, are you a bastardization of pure Khitan blood,” Diluguin growled, “son of the whor* of Tibet.”

A dead silence reigned between them. Agdji bared his teeth and laid hand on his spear, but Diluguin neither backed away nor apologized for his words. Before the reed that bent, he was as a pillar of stone, unmoving and final in his choice.

“Get out,” Agdji eventually spat, “and never return here.”

This break between Agdji and his chosen heir occurred at perhaps the worst possible time. Scattered news from the east indicated that the Mongols had indeed sacked the fertile crescent, and were now moving up through Armenia, on the mountainous eastern borders of the Roman Empire, enveloping the steppe on both sides like some great, bloated beast. In the process Chagatai Borjigin was growing more skilled by the day in the arts of war, and thousands of new riders swelled his banners from his new conquests. War might soon be upon the Khitan, and with the realm already fractured between Agdji and Djoborin, the Huangdi could not be fighting his own sons.

This was especially true as there was no alternative heir but Diluguin: Agdji’s eldest, Saradin, was an incompetent coward who hated Agdji, and Agdji despised him in turn. Agdji’s third son Qutug was better, but had recently lost an eye in a duel, and would not receive the support of the realm as a result. His fourth son, Dorhan, by Cheu’en was more promising, but was only six years old; his youngest, Noilhar, was but four. Reconciliation had to come.

Yet Agdji had been gravely insulted, and though his temper had cooled, he still felt Moshan was an abomination and that Diluguin should pay homage to him and apologize. Diluguin, despite the pleading of his mother, in turn felt that Agdji had insulted him and his son both, and that he had done nothing more than reveal the hypocrisy of a man born outside of the Tengri, Khitan tradition himself. Proud and brave, Diluguin flatly refused to ever disown "the child of his choice," nor to bow before his father retracted his insulting words about Moshan.

And so reconciliation did not come. Neither side would apologize, and Agdji’s demand that all Khitans retain the features of the east began working its poison.

For a time Agdji despaired, thinking that he might in the end have no worthy sons to take the throne, and that Djoborin might succeed in his clawing for power after all. It was a disturbing thought to the Emperor, yet not disturbing enough to cause him to bow to the pressure of his wife and apologize to his wayward son.

Agdji instead busied himself with organizing the realm further, although it was a hollow pursuit that, like his father, he did not take to in a natural way. Nevertheless it was necessitated, as by the decree of Daweizu, all Khitans who entered the Jin Khidan Zhou after his death were to be enslaved. Thousands attempted to cross the borders of the Turburur and Suni rebels into the Golden State, fleeing the Mongols, and each had to be parted from their possessions and given over as slaves to one group or another.

During this moment of anger, seeking to take out his frustrations on those who had not followed their Emperor Daweizu, Agdji II took the extraordinary step of giving most of the Khitan refugees as slaves to Poles and Russians. It was done as insult to the Khitan refugees as much as to satisfy Agdji’s anger, but it was one of the few moves he made without Huei whispering in his ear, and it turned out to be among the best. Without Agdji making the Khitan slaves subservient to those who were otherwise second-class citizens within the Jin Khidan Zhou, it is unlikely that a peace could ever be reached between cultures in the highly-stratified Khitan society. This was the first olive branch a sitting Emperor had ever extended to them, intentional or no.

In the course of this work, Agdji was suddenly summoned with all haste to Terebovl, at the base of the Mountain of Dreams. At first the Emperor believed that Djoborin had gotten up to some mischief, but he soon learned that someone unlooked-for had arrived.

As Agdji threw open the great double-doors to the pavilion of the ten-thousand spears, he saw in the distance the bent figure of a short man, crying before the stone sarcophagus of Daweizu. Agdji consciously did not pass through the spears but around the edges of the great pavilion, drawing close to the west end and the tomb of his father.

There, bent and weeping before his father’s resting place, was the aged but unmistakable figure of Shulu Cha II, Irkin of Kashgar, the sole loyalist governor of the Khitan Empire.

Cha turned to Agdji and, sorrowfully, kowtowed before him. “Huangdi,” he whispered sadly. “I did not arrive in time to see him off. I beg your forgiveness. I have failed Agdji.” He twitched randomly, as if he had been tortured or driven to some madness over the long years, but his voice was steady.

“Daweizu,” Agdji II corrected softly. “But there is no failure. We did not think to ever see you again, loyal Cha. We thought you were dead.”

“Time and again, I very nearly was,” he sighed, still kneeling before Daweizu’s tomb. He reached out with a gnarled old hand to caress the polished stone of Daweizu's sarcophagus, tenderly, before continuing in a whisper. “We had to fight through Persia, then through the mountains crawling with Mongol agents and allies, then again through the steppe filled with filth loyal to the traitors. I began with ten-thousand souls, and have brought you less than two. But I have answered his call, as best I can.”

Tears formed in Agdji’s eyes, and he brushed them away absently; this man thought to apologize? The Huangdi grasped him by the cheeks, and Cha jumped as if shocked at the touch. But Agdji turned the old man's head to his own, and, bending down in a bow, gently kissed the aged retainer's forehead.

“Cha,” Agdji said, gently helping the old man to his feet, “the Liao do not forget our debts. We did not forget the Siau, we did not forget the Daerqa. We will not forget you. You repeated the feats of Dashi with less hope and a more meager reward waiting for you at your journey’s end. We will not ever forget it.”

The unexpected arrival of Cha, a fierce loyalist and commander superior even to Djoborin, tipped the scales once again in favor of the loyalists to Agdji. Agdji’s break with Diluguin had permitted Djoborin to begin a campaign of undermining and criticizing the pro-Sinic faction within the Khitan court, but the arrival of Cha, who had been Irkin of Kashgar and overseer of the Road of Silk, was a surprise support to the Sinicizing faction. With thousands of hardened Khitan warriors at his back all pledging total fealty to Agdji, his return significantly--albeit temporarily--weakened Djoborin’s support among the nobility.

Agdji, with Huei’s encouragement, jumped on this chance to strengthen his authority as Huangdi. Like his father before him, Agdji undertook to formalize many of the at-present informal powers of the Emperor, including the right to call councils of the nobility, to dictate matters to be discussed, to oversee the defense of the realm from Huangjin Zhongxin, and to completely control the state’s interaction with foreign courts.

Djoborin naturally opposed the measure, but Cha’s miraculous return left everyone else so in awe that they, at least briefly, saw in Agdji the same same semi-mythical ability of his father and grandfather before him to turn even the most hostile circ*mstances to his favor, and, basking in this false light, supported a measure they would otherwise have opposed. Although as a consequence of this formal increase in power Agdji’s actual power lessened--what before were mostly informal groups of disaffected nobles would soon galvanize into a group of individuals who firmly believed that the Huangdi was accumulating too much formal power, and were determined to safeguard as much of their independence as they could--in the end the measure was a strengthening of the position of Huangdi which Agdji hoped that Ago, at least, might be able to make use of in fighting against the influence of Djoborin.

Of course, Djoborin could not be held back from advancing for long. His cunning was not easy to overcome, even through miraculous arrivals unlooked-for. Even as Agdji’s legal strength increased following the return of Shulu Cha, Djoborin applied greater pressure on Ituk of Belz, giving him no peace and undercutting his recovery from a tainted wound. This wound, as it happened, had been caused by Djoborin himself through an assassination attempt, though none knew this at the time.

Although Ituk struggled on in life for almost a year following Agdji’s coronation, when he had first begun to take seriously ill, in the beginning of March 1229 he finally breathed his last, childless. Though the court swiftly spread rumors that Djoborin had Ituk killed they were not widely believed--it would be many years before the matter of the death of Yaerud Ituk would once more play a role in the politics of the Jin Khidan Zhou. And the lack of proof meant that there was no grounds for Huangjin Zhongxin to prevent Belz being inherited by Ituk's closest surviving brother: Djoborin.

Djoborin now controlled the pass of Peremyshl, which he had long coveted, as well as the Carpathians north of the Mountain of Dreams. Overnight he had gone from being a significant landholder in the Jin Khidan Zhou to one of the largest and most powerful, holding highly defensive positions and with many troops ready to flock to his banners. His star suddenly surged to ascendance anew. And when he smiled at Agdji at the funeral of Ituk, he no longer had to fake it: he was pleased. With Diluguin out of favor, Ituk dead and the mountain passes his, Djoborin had won.

…or, at least, so Djoborin had thought; he was again to be disappointed. Although Agdji and Diluguin had not spoken since their falling-out a year and a half earlier, the court was made aware that Diluguin had indeed maintained his promise of marrying a Khitan as his second wife, and she had given birth to a little girl, whom he had named Moya. Although there was not even a hint of apology in the note, Diluguin did say that Moya bore the features of the east.

It was enough. Despairing of Djoborin’s constant successes and unwilling to let his callous younger brother see the throne in violation of Daweizu’s wishes, Agdji finally had enough of an excuse to humble himself before Diluguin. He traveled to his seat at Sandomierz and begged forgiveness.

“I should not have insulted you, or… or Moshan,” Agdji spoke stiffly once Diluguin finally agreed to see him. “I was… in error. I disagree with your choice of wife, but Moshan would not rule regardless, and that means his skin is not a threat. You have done as I asked and married a Khitan. I am shamed at the insult I gave you. I am… sorry.”

Diluguin bowed, and apologized in turn. “I insulted you and all of your blood, myself and my son included, in a callous way. I wounded myself to wound you, foolishly. Forgive me.”

And so they were reconciled, with Diluguin back in Agdji’s favor as his preferred heir. Djoborin’s ascending star faltered slightly--it was not destined to be so easy to see the throne as he had hoped.

Yet whenever Djoborin suffered a setback, he all but immediately rebounded and struck out again to recover any lost ground--although Agdji despised the intentions of his half-brother, he was forced to admit that he admired that tenacity in him.

The Khitan had come to an agreement with the Europeans to shield them, and to be united with them in Christ. Daweizu had taken this to mean that there should be no war between the Khitans and any Europeans, but already by the early parts of Agdji II’s reign this determination was beginning to break down, at least as regards the Poles.

Granted eastern Poland as part of the determination of the Conclave of Galich, many Khitans viewed the entirety of Poland as their right, especially given that the Kings of Poland, the Pomeranian Gryfita dynasty, were largely viewed by the Pope as closeted pagans and incompetents who had almost led the territory to ruin. Thus, although the Pope did not specifically license all Polish territory to the Khitans, he nevertheless did not chastise them if they sought to claim parts of it, and even tacitly provided his blessing.

Djoborin, naturally, used this to his advantage. If civil war was looming yet again, he could use more land and levies, and that could be obtained from the weakened Polish Kingdom, which had just recently undergone a succession.

In December of that year, after over five years of no military expeditions, Agdji finally decides that the Jin Khidan Zhou must expand. Concerns about stagnation abound within the court, especially in light of the onrushing Mongol advance. Although expanding eastward in some senses would appear only to draw the Khitans closer to the Mongols and further into the arms of danger, the decision is sensible to Agdji: the defenses around the critical trade city of Kiev can be strengthened, and in the process several of the traitorous lords of the Suni Khanate can be eradicated.

But foremost in the Huangdi’s mind is the need to shore up the right of Diluguin to rule by any means possible. Agdji’s son had yet to fight a battle, and this left him untested, his abilities uncertain. Through victorious conflict Diluguin could prove how skilled he was, while also honing his abilities in war and familiarity with other nobles, making connections that could prove fortuitous in the event of a possible civil war.

While Agdji and Diluguin were organizing the crown levies of Huangjin Zhongxin and beginning their campaign, Djoborin was not idle. He saw here an opportunity to advance his own position faster than Agdji could advance Diluguin’s, a chance to force a matter which Agdji never would have permitted if he had been fully focused on the affairs of state.

When the news reached Huangjin Zhongxin Huei attempted to block the request, but she could not--the Khitan bureaucrats had no love for her, and indeed some of them were loyalists to Djoborin, not Agdji II. Huei’s own insistence upon a bureaucracy prevented a single regent from being named, diffusing power and allowing the ministers to subvert the wishes of the Huangdi.

But, in their minds, everything was in order: a request had been made, a huge dowry had been paid, and letters of recommendation had been submitted from dozens of the lords of the realm begging the capital to proceed with Djoborin’s worthy request. What were they meant to do, deny one of Daweizu’s greatest sons the hand of his niece, who was herself the product of a union between the Agdji Huangdi and his daughter, a union in auspicious and holy alignment with the desires of the prophet of Tengri? It was unthinkable to deny it; Qadju was exceptional, and with Djoborin she could produce children more exceptional still, heirs to shake the foundations of the west with their might.

When Agdji finally heard the news some weeks later, his shoulders slumped in defeat. Djoborin had succeeded in taking his most worthy daughter, so that all of Djoborin’s heirs would also be of his own body. Djoborin could now argue that his sons would be a fusion of Agdji II’s line and his own, so that he could be elected and the Khitan could maintain both of their previously-incompatible commandments: to pass the throne through Agdji’s line, and to always select the strongest to rule.

The Huangdi’s opinion of the situation was fatalist at best, but he did not let that show through to Diluguin; even if Djoborin should in the end prove to have the support of the electors upon his death and be named the heir of Ago, he could at least focus on making his son the selected heir of Djoborin upon Ago’s death, which would in some way subvert the wishes of his little brother.

War with levied troops, especially footmen, was not something that Agdji was yet used to, as his defeat by the Lietuvai had shown. Yet Diluguin did not enter into battle with any prior conceptions about how to wage war; he was born on the steppe, but he was not yet five years old when the Khitan settled in Poland, and the war he was learning now was the first he had ever known. He proved to be exceptionally flexible, to the Emperor’s great pleasure.

Battle after battle was won, through the slowness of the Khitan footmen and the fast horsem*n of the hordes they faced drew out the conflict. Nevertheless, when the horsem*n finally stayed in place long enough to be engaged, with the help of his father and Ago, Diluguin was able to make intelligent, intuitive strategic decisions about how to secure victory. He was learning quickly, and rapidly proving his worth in a way that his uncle Djoborin had not.

More pleasing to the Huangdi, however, was the extent to which the great lords of the Suni marched themselves to their deaths at the head of their false Huangdi’s armies. Every battle Diluguin won seemed to deliver to them another Irkin, or the sons of one. Between deaths in battle, captured enemy leaders that would have their throats unceremoniously cut, and raids on the camps of their enemies, over 30 nobles of the Suni Khanate would eventually be slaughtered, including 10 sons of the ‘royal’ house. It was a permanent destabilization of the foul bandits who dared occupy Tamatarkha, one of the seats of Daweizu in life.

The conflict dragged on for another year as the Khitan armies gradually pursued the few remaining armies of their enemies, finally forcing them to stand and fight and, in two great and bloody battles, eradicated them.

For many in the west, it had been decades since they had seen a truly impressive series of battles from the Khitan; the last victory of any merit they had seen had been at Jiket’i in 1201, over thirty years beforehand. And yes, it had been terribly impressive, a true rout of the Muslims by Agdji I. Yet it was Daweizu who led that battle; did his son and heir have the same mettle in him?

The campaign south showed the Europeans that not merely Agdji II had that spark, but Diluguin had it as well. Relying not at all on any of the realm’s great levies, Agdji and Diluguin fought pitched engagements at 4:1 odds and won every battle they fought. It was an incredible vindication.

Although Djoborin had still struck a blow to the legitimacy of Diluguin which Agdji privately believed could not be overcome, it could not be denied that the war was still of great benefit. Tengri above had blessed Diluguin with a healthy son with the bronzed skin of the east immediately upon the war’s end--a sure sign of restored favor if ever there was any--and Biaen the Beautiful, who had previously been wrapped around Djoborin’s finger due to his man-lust, found himself smitten with Diluguin instead. This disgusted Diluguin to no end, but was nevertheless a boon: Biaen’s loyalties could not now be guaranteed to lie in Djoborin’s favor.

Of course, by far the most profitable benefit of the victory was the European--including Khitan--recognition of Diluguin as a skilled commander.

Agdji had taken great risk in the war, calling no levies but his own and giving Diluguin complete and final say in all matters, letting him command the center of his forces. Ago and he were there to catch the boy if he fell, of course, but in war a single mishandled battle could mean death; it was still a great gamble, even if he was with his son. Yet Diluguin had proven himself beyond all doubts, while Djoborin refused to command his own armies marching into Poland. The recognition of Diluguin throughout Europe while Djoborin cowered meekly in Galich and let his sworn men fight for him left Diluguin with many friends and allies abroad which Djoborin lacked.

Unfortunately--or fortunately, depending upon one’s view--the victorious wars contributed to drawing the full attention of Europe back to the Khitan. Ever since the death of Sebatios Komnenos, who had been the greatest supporter of the Khitans in Europe, European interest in the Jin Khidan Zhou had waned. There had been no hostilities, of course, and relations were still cordial; most European realms had simply become content to let the Khitans be, without much interest in them or their affairs.

Three events that occurred in rapid succession changed that: Prvoslav Nemanjic died and was succeeded by Andronikos II Komnenos, a relative of Sebatios and a friend to the Khitan; Agdji and Diluguin won their wars at greatly stacked odds, reinforcing the waning belief in Europe that the Khitan were warlords without parallel; and the palace-complex of Huangjin Zhongxin was completed.

Without the ascension of Andronikos and the victories to the south, it’s doubtful that the opening of the palace would have drawn much attention. Yet when Agdji announced a great feast in celebration, Andronikos gladly accepted the invitation, and this prompted a flurry of acceptance from other quarters. In the end the Byzantine Emperor, King of Georgia, the von Hohenzollern Emperor of the west, and Agdji’s nephew King Torgils of Sweden all came to the celebration.

The guests were overawed by the great complex and just as impressed with ‘Agjee Hwangdee’ as they called him, but the restoration of European interest in the realm brought complications. Agdji had to hide that his youngest children were of his own blood, for he, at least, knew that the Conclave of Galich did not legally permit him to practice incest. So far he had been able to escape notice through the 50-year allowance for concubines (he could always just say the children were of some random woman) but that time was swiftly approaching an end. Something was going to come to a head, soon.

But, for the time being, Agdji was still able to successfully hide his relationship with his daughter and niece, and the renewed eyes of Europe were at least partially welcome, as the attention helped to ensure that the Khitan would have the backing of the western kingdoms in the event of a conflict with the Mongols. For a time, things were calm. The conclusion of the construction of the palace-complex even allowed the Huangdi to consolidate enough funds to prepare a great expansion of levying structures throughout the capital demesne.

Yet news of momentous import soon reached Huangjin Zhongxin, news that directly addressed whether the promised war with the Mongols would ever occur. Huei and the Emperor were rushed into the inner chambers of the palace.

Yaerud Hedeng, son of Sabon, was the lord in charge of monitoring news from the east. He alone was within the private audience-chamber, and his news was so urgent he did not even pause to give proper courtesy.

“We must withhold this information,” he said as soon as the Emperor and his wife entered the room, “or else it could cause uncontrolled jubilation; nothing is certain yet. But I am told a tremendous rebellion has broken out against the Borjigin; perhaps the entirety of Persia has risen up. The Mongol filth have beaten such odds before, but this is another challenge to their very being. I am told it is tens of thousands on one side against a similar amount on the other, the entire east divided once again.”

Hedeng’s information was not incorrect, though he believed that the sides were exchanged: that the Mongol Khan had tens of thousands more troops than the Muslim rebels. In reality the rebel leader, Tolun Inanchlar, descendent of a Turkmen dynasty originally serving the Seljuks, at least nominally outnumbered the Mongols three-to-one.

Yet this weighing of the numbers discounts the independent armies of the various Mongol Aqas, of which there were seven. In all, the horsem*n and the rebels likely had forces that were almost even. It would come down to which side had the better commanders.

Although Agdji ordered Hedeng to continue to monitor the war with all of his focus, he believed it likely that the cursed Borjigin probably had more men and better commanders--just as with he and his father, Agdji knew too-well that the steppe bred men meant for war. Yet if the entirety of Persia truly did rise against them, perhaps it would bleed enough of their troops off that they would not be able to challenge the Suni or Turburur. The Mongol Khanate and Jin Khidan Zhou may not ever meet in battle.

Agdji felt a hollow disappointment. He had hoped to crush the Borjigin beneath him; he hoped they swiftly won the civil war and pressed west.

Affairs seem to conspire against Agdji’s desire to meet the cursed Borjigin in battle, however: they have a new enemy, too strong to ignore, to their southwestern flank. Caliph Razin has accomplished his life’s goal.

Born the youngest son of a peasant leader in Bahrain, Razin had no business ever dreaming of greatness. Yet Allah had plans for him: to right the wrongs of the past, restoring the blood of the true Caliphs and sparing the world from destruction brought on by the failures of the Fatimid Caliphs, the true descendants of Caliph Isma’il. Only the blood of a new Prophet, born once again into the world, could spare Islam from the fracturing of the Caliphate and reunite Muslims around the world under the single banner of the new chosen one and his descendants, free of the bickering and counter-claims of the relatives of the first prophet, Mohammed. This mission was given to Razin: to unite Islam by taking the great holy cities of the faith, and guarding Arabia against all threat. When this was done, Allah promised him in a vision given to him at his lowest point, he would receive the greatest gift that could be bestowed unto him.

Now, at seventy-three, Razin has achieved Allah’s command.

Holding Mecca, Medinah, Cairo, Jerusalem and Damas, on the 20th of December 1235 Razin declares himself Caliph of the True Faithful, steward of the true line of descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, and ruler of all the Arabs.

These dual announcements, were they made by anyone but Razin, likely would have been met with mockery at best. Yet by 1170 Islam was in such a great retreat across the world that it seemed for a moment that it would break, and Razin alone, against the tide of Sicilian colonization in North Africa and the onslaught of pagan riders from the east, had held out against the threat--and more than held out, but prospered. He has taken the disparate realms of Arabia and East Africa and unified them into a single, mighty Empire with a single permitted doctrine: the infallibility of the true successors of the Caliphs, and their right to lead all Muslims around the world.

It has been almost 300 years since Arabia was so united, and over 100 since the last Fatimid Caliph ruled in Cairo. Razin’s personal strength and his moral authority from beating back Islam’s religious enemies, in the eyes of most Muslims, gives him the right to declare himself Caliph: he alone, at Allah’s will, spared them from falling under the sway of the lords of Europe or the horsem*n of the east. He was the resurgence of Islam.

But, of course, according to Razin he was also more than that: he was Mohammed reborn.

According to his vision, Allah had promised Razin that, if he proved true and was able to proclaim himself Caliph with the support of the Dar al-Islam, he would be transformed, his blood becoming the blood of the Prophet and his sons becoming the Prophet’s sons. The Allah he saw in his vision said that the death of Mohammed’s sons Qasim, Abdullah and Ibrahim spelled disaster for Islam, and forever perversely tainted the faith by forcing the true successors through Fatima’s line and her descendent Isma’il to hide. When the Fatimids returned unlooked-for and for a time led a resurgence of Islamic power there was a chance for all to be put to rights, but the Fatimids proved to be imperfect reflections of their great ancestor tainted by their blood passing through the female line and thus fell to decadence, spelling doom for the world.

Razin had never hidden this part of his vision from anyone, and indeed was often subject to being attacked as an arch-heretic as a result. But he had ever proven victorious and survived all threats against him, and now, in the end, had so broken the Ulema and so chained the people of Arabia to him that, when he declared himself Mohammed reborn, most truly believed it. Beyond Razin’s incredible personal might and his moral conquests, if it was not true, what hope did they have? The Abbasid Caliphs were hidden away in central Anatolia, largely broken following Agdji I's annihilation of the royal line and subject to almost constant invasions by the Roman Empire. Perhaps worse, just two years before the Almoravid Sultanate had collapsed, leaving the whole of North Africa open to further Sicilian invasion, and placing the Holy Land under threat should the guard on Egypt fail. If Razin did not save Islam, who would?

And so when Razin proclaimed himself Mohammed and his line the only true line of Sayyida, his people cheered him. Razin was the new Prophet, the savior of Islam, and Arabia was poised to begin the next great age of Jihads.

Of course, the actions of the man who would be Mohammed were not known in Poland, and if they had been known they would not be cared about--beyond, of course, his part in the collapse of Jerusalem, of which the Khitan already bitterly knew, the news having sent Agdji I into the fit that had led to his death.

Matters in the Jin Khidan Zhou proceeded along a much more mundane path, for the moment. Skirmishes with Poland along the Sandomierz border had intensified following Djoborin’s conquest of Wislica, and this led Agdji and Diluguin to a final break with Malowuj, the heir of the previous King of Poland, Bogumil. Bogumil had been willing to cooperate with the Khitan in the early half of his reign, perceiving that it was impossible for the Gryfita to ever reconquer the east. Yet Djoborin’s invasion of Wislica hardened Bogumil, and when he captured Djoborin’s seat at Galich during the war, he even made off with and tortured Ago’s daughter Uroen, Djoborin’s wife, cruelly until she perished. Yet compared to Malowuj, Bogumil was friendly to the Khitan; Malowuj was young and overconfident, despite his armies being defeated by a single vassal of the Jin Khidan Zhou. It was he who commanded the raids, and he treated every man, woman and child he captured as his father had treated Uroen. Diluguin in turn was the one who beat back the disorganized Poles every time they attempted to cross the border, yet the raids never ceased.

In recognition of his victories--and to spite his half-brother--Agdji named Diluguin the Lord of Sandomierz, de jure lord of both his own lands and the lordship of Wislica, although Agdji “graciously” acknowledged Djoborin’s right to rule it “temporarily.” The battle of wills between the two brothers was far from over.

Although Agdji was the arch-breaker of the tenets of the Conclave of Galich, guilty as he was of abusing the wording of the family group clause to commit incest, he did his best to adhere to the other tenets of the Conclave, if for no other reason than to rationalize his actions. The most critical argument of the Conclave from the Khitan side was that the Liao were destined to reunite all Christendom by entering into communion with all the various splinter movements, yet heretofore there had been little movement in this direction. Daweizu, though he had used entering into communion with both the Catholic and Orthodox creeds as a means of entry into Europe and a promise of good relations after settlement, had in truth not been deeply interested in seeking to unify the minor branches of the faith, viewing them as too weak to bother with. In the rare instances that Daweizu had ever spoken about the unification of Christendom, he seemed to envision a future where Catholicism ruled the west and Orthodoxy the east, yet in communion and alliance with one another, with the Pope the spiritual steward of the west and the Patriarch the spiritual guardian of the East, and the Khitan the bridge between them both.

Agdji agreed with his father in the main, but also believed there to be no harm in entering into communion with smaller creeds when the opportunity presented itself. Exactly this occurred when the minor King Levan IV of Apkhazeti invited Agdji to his coronation.

Levan was an Iconoclastic heretic, a seditious sect of Orthodoxy which had its base of power now primarily within the Caucasus, where the power vacuum between Christian and Islamic denominations during the past three decades of turmoil had led to fluid religious and political loyalties. Long before his conversion Agdji had promised Levan the hand of his daughter Diamtshan in exchange for an alliance to offset the power of the Suni from the south, and to gather news on Mongol troop movements. Regardless of his current faith Agdji found Levan to still be useful, and thus gladly agreed to attend the coronation in order to shore up the alliance and gain more news about the ongoing Mongol Civil War. When staying at the capital of Kutaisi he was graciously permitted to take communion at the hands of an Iconoclast Bishop, in which he gladly partook.

When news that the Khitan had entered into communion with the Iconoclasts reached Constantinople, it led to a flurry of confused and angry reactions which Andronikos II Komnenos, current Emperor and a friend of the Khitan, found impossible to quiet--indeed, he himself was outraged! It was one thing to enter into dual communion with the Catholics and the Orthodox, neither of whom considered the other to be outright heretical, but the creed of Iconoclasm was viewed as inherently incompatible with Orthodoxy; the two could not both be correct, and yet this was precisely what Agdji II claimed by entering into communion with the faith, in the process giving Iconoclasts support unlooked-for but much desired.

Andronikos immediately sent a furious message to Huangjin Zhongxin which arrived there shortly after Agdji returned, protesting the decision to enter into communion and demanding a retraction of the act “in the name of stability and the friendship between your house and my own.”

To this Agdji was at first inclined to write that he knew of no friendship between the Komnenoi and the Yaerud, save only that the Komnenoi owed the Yaerud a great debt for destroying the Abbasids for them. Yet Huei intervened and convinced the impolitic Agdji to issue a polite, if noncommittal, apology. He was made to reply that he wished “all lords under the Roman domain to obey their Emperor without question,” which was “the very reason by which I have attempted to bring closer together the Iconoclastic and Orthodox positions, so that those who are Iconoclast might better obey their Emperor without feeling it to be a betrayal of their faith.”

Although untrue to Agdji’s motives, this argument did find a surprising amount of purchase in the Roman court when it was received there, and spelled the beginning of a diplomatic focus in Anatolia for the Empire as it began a period of attempting to peacefully reintegrate the heretical movements which had splintered off at its far eastern periphery. Yet the Empire's attempts to peacefully integrate the Caucasus would necessitate the deployment of their armies elsewhere, and would soon enough spell disaster for the Roman state.

Loyalists to Djoborin sometimes referred to themselves as the “Spears Sworn to the Glorious Past,” as they intended to lead a return to a time before the influence of their opponents--the Sinic faction, led by Huei--began to Sinicize the Khitan to an extent which they believed Daweizu did not intend. The dream of the “Spears” was a settled empire built on the harsh reality of the steppe and prizing war above all, an arch-Tengrist state with minimal interactions with Christendom and a focus on Khitan exceptionalism to an extent that even Agdji II balked at.

Although some of them, Djoborin chief among them, did not care at all about what Daweizu intended and only sought power, most did care about the wishes of the greatest Khitan, and at the very least couched their arguments as a matter of loyalty to him and obeying the intend behind his words, even if (as in the case of the succession of Diluguin) they found themselves arguing against his direct commands. Loyalty to Daweizu, at least in form, was required; but no such absolute loyalty was owed to Agdji II, and they had always moved against him whenever they possibly could, seeking to discredit him and limit his ability to interfere with Djoborin’s ascent. It was an unpleasant surprise at the court, then, when what should have been a matter of rejoicing--Djoborin overtly supporting the throne--finally came to pass.

It was so unpleasant because it was all too clear why Djoborin finally began to speak in Agdji’s favor: his half-brother had become his Father-in-Law, as Djoborin finally wed Agdji’s daughter Qadju. Qadju was an exceptional and skilled woman, strong and tall after the manner of Agdji’s children, and her marriage to Djoborin was a painful reminder that the Emperor’s younger brother would now be able to make a successful argument that his selection to bear the Mandate of Heaven would abide by Daweizu’s commandment that Agdji the Younger’s line should reign, as Djoborin’s sons would be of their joined house. In this context, Djoborin's support of Agdji was a bare attempt to appease the Imperial court and smooth over the long history of hostility between Galich and Huangjin Zhongxin, as well as shore up the might of an Empire which Djoborin firmly believed that he would soon inherit.

Just like his father, killing or f*cking were the only methods of distraction which Agdji knew, and in this case he deemed killing to be more useful: Diluguin still needed further combat experience, after all. Agdji thus began a campaign to seize the Trakai from the second Great King of the Lithuanians, Svarnas, as well as to secure the Turov and thereby cut off the expansion of the Turburur Khanate north into the Polotsk, where they had been rampaging.

The war in the north was rapidly brought to a conclusion, as the few hillforts of the Lietuvai could not withstand the assault of the Khitan crown levies, nor could the Lietuvai successfully utilize their typical guerilla tactics against the Khitan, who were far more skilled in scouting and ambush than the Lithuanians could ever hope to be. Prince Marius, son of the first Great King Dovilas, was quickly parted with his lands, which were immediately given over to the rule of Qutug.

Although Qutug was half-blind and therefore all but certain to never be selected to bear the Mandate of Heaven, Agdji felt that the move was sensible, as Qutug could thereby be relied upon as a steady ally for his elder brother Diluguin: despite being unable to inherit the throne, Qutug would need to be mad to intentionally vote to select a candidate that was not of Agdji and Huei’s line, if for no other reason than to secure the continued prosperity of his own children. It was for this very reason which Agdji had chosen to strike against the Trakai at all: to strengthen Qutug, who would never be a threat, but might perhaps be an asset.

The war in the south was over no less quickly--indeed, although this time the conflict against the Turburur did not result in nearly so many of their nobles slain, it did result in the collapse of their armies and the capture of Pinsk, which was given over to Sen Dorhan, lord of Turov, with instruction that any armies attempting to travel between the Turburur’s eastern territories and their small western holdings should be waylaid and destroyed, hopefully pushing the expansionist Khanate back onto the steppe.

This, however, is unlikely, for the Turburur are not likely to belong to the steppe for very much longer. The Mongols have finally begun to move west.

The second Mongol rebellion has been violently put down, and although Khan Chagatai is rumored to have had a mental breakdown, he is still, at least in name, the all-ruler of the Mongols. Whether at his own instigation or the instigation of men of his court, the Mongol Khanate has begun to march into what was once the Bolgar territory, before the Khitan wiped them all out. With the armies of the Turburur annihilated in Agdji’s war, the Mongol victory is all but inevitable. The conquest would put the Borjigin within just a few hundred kilometers of the furthest eastern thrust of the Jin Khidan Zhou, and, should the Khanate not fracture upon Chagatai’s (probably imminent) death, could well mean that war between the Khanate and the Golden Khitan State is inevitable.

Agdji is ecstatic.

Sadly for Agdji, fears about the state of Chagatai’s health prove founded. Although the actual date of his death is not known--it may have occurred months earlier and simply been hidden by the court until the war with the Turburur could be completed--on the 9th of December 1237 it is announced that the Mongol clans have met to select a new All-Ruler, an implicit acknowledgement that Chagatai has died.

There is little historical consensus about the later years of Chagatai’s life, but even those who argue in favor of an empowered Khagan acknowledge that he suffered immense mental strain in his final days, and even if he was ultimately in control of his decisions, they accede that he was under massive pressure from his court to devolve power. Many historians simply believe that the huge rebellion in Persia which began in 1235 led Chagatai to despair of the chances of any Mongol holding on to the unified Khanate, however, and that by the time Tolun Inanchlar was defeated Chagatai had entered into an almost vegetative state and the day-to-day rule of the Khanate had already been seized by his primary heir, his brother and the eldest trueborn son of the Genghis Khan, Jochi.

For the first time since the rise of the Genghis Khan, the succession of the Mongol Khanate loses all sense of formality and respect. The get of Ghengis have become a pack of vultures circling a bloated corpse.

The Great Mongol State was a behemoth which was barely capable of being controlled even when it was run by the Great Khan himself, who commanded absolute loyalty from his people in a way akin to the respect Daweizu had earned among the Khitan. Yet in the immediate aftermath of the ascension of Chagatai, matters actually stabilized: Temujin’s bastard son Timur was made to swear fealty, the Tou in Tibet were made subservient to the Mongols and their raids against the state were stopped, and the last independent lords of Persia west of the Suleiman range were crushed, providing the Mongol state with natural borders to its east. If Chagatai had stopped his conquests there and focused upon consolidating his rule, it might be that a unified Mongol state could have persisted.

But there was no concept of ending their conquests for the Mongols. Unlike the Khitan, who even at their most barbaric had the concept of the Mountain of Dreams and the hope for an end to their long struggle on the steppe, the Mongols held no such beliefs: true barbarians to the last, they conceive of only war, death and dominance. Chagatai could not stop his conquests, for if he did he would have been perceived as weak, and his riders would have risen against him.

The Mongols were unbeatable in battle (by any save the Hunayn and Yaerud, perhaps), and their realm grew constantly--but for every new valley or hill it incorporated it grew less and less stable, and the conquest of the Caucasus in particular ended any hope of unified rule. That hellish pit of variant cultures, religions and clans could not even be ruled properly by the Seljuks, who ruled from Baghdad. How could horse-riders ruling from Yulduz, nigh to Emil on the Silk Road thousands of kilometers away, hope to govern it?

The sons of Genghis were tired of the rebellions of Persia and the Caucasus by the time Chagatai was near death, and wished instead to expand into the plains of the north, where their horses would prosper. It was this hope which Jochi exploited.

Strongly open to suggestion or outright incapacitated by the time he drew close to his death, Jochi was able to pressure Chagatai into making an agreement to “divest” Persia from the Khanate. Jochi was to be the primary heir and was to inherit the title of All-Ruler, becoming the next Genghis Khan. The rule of the South, meanwhile, was to be committed to Bogen, the only son of Temujin’s fourth trueborn son Tolui.

If matters had proceeded as Jochi had wished, the steppe would have been given entirely to him, and the overwhelming might of the Mongol clans and their vast herds would have been his to rule, while the juvenile Bogen would have been named the nominal ruler of the settled realms of Persia and the Caucasus, which none of the heirs of Genghis believed could truly be held by the horse-lords of the Khanate.

Yet Jochi was upset in his wishes, and this spelled disaster for the unity of the Khanate. Rather than splitting from the rebellious and uncontrollable south while retaining the strength of the nomadic north, the rest of Genghis’s sons suspected that Jochi exerted undue influence over Chagatai in the last months of his life. They agreed to give over Persia to Bogen--no one else wanted the trouble of attempting to rule such a hostile land--but they refused to acknowledge the fat old Jochi as the Genghis Khan, selecting instead Temujin’s youngest son, also called Temujin.

But Jochi had anticipated this, and began his reign with the greatest dishonor. Against the laws of the Mongols, Jochi unleashed his armies upon the unsuspecting forces of his brothers encamped nearby, and by means of this surprise attack slaughtered thousands of the loyalist troops who would have supported the conclusions of the electoral moot and fought for Temujin. Jochi’s brothers were all forced to flee to the east, where their brother Chulgetei, ruling in the Middle Kingdom as Chengzu, would support them against Jochi and his violation of the laws of the Mongols.

But in the short-term, the victory was Jochi’s. The armies of the Mongols overwhelmingly went over to him as the strongest, and he gained the most valuable pasture-land in the west. Although the east was lost to him and Chulgetei labeled him an enemy to the Borjigin, so long as his armies were the strongest it did not matter. War between Jochi and his heirs and the Temujin, the legal All-Ruler, was inevitable.

Yet regardless of Jochi’s nominal success, de facto his need to resort to treachery was the end of any united Mongol state, in the north or south. Jochi was de facto the All-Ruler, but none acknowledged his right to the title; meanwhile, Temujin was legally the All-Ruler, but had no power with which to support his claim. Bogen, as a minor ruling a fractured land and rapidly becoming dominated by his own court, would soon not even care--he would become focused on settled life in the same way the Khitans had, provided he survived long enough. Sapped of Bogen’s support and with Chulgetei unwilling to commit to a campaign to destroy Jochi outright, the Mongols, at least for the foreseeable future, were to be divided.

Although the news of the partition of the Khanate which reached the west was not entirely clear, it was understood that, although the so-called “Golden Horde” which ruled closest to the Jin Khidan Zhou was the strongest of the Mongol successor-states, it was still a far cry from the power of the unified Khanate. The civil war between Jochi and his brothers dragged on as the weeks passed, and it was clear that there would be no single, great showdown in which Agdji could avenge the dishonor which the Mongols had inflicted upon his house. As the weeks passed he grew more and more disappointed that the Mongols were wasting their life-blood in the east rather than turning west to what he believed was a “real challenge” against the Khitan, but he was still buoyant. “If the Mongols will not come to us,” he quipped to Diluguin one evening, “we will simply get to them. They are close enough to us now that just a few leagues of open plains separate us and our vengeance!”

Sadly for Agdji son of Agdji, this chance would never come to him. Energetic and lively, he went to bed on the night of the 24th of February and did not awaken the next morning. He had shown no signs of weakness--indeed, quite the opposite. It was simply his time to pass.

On February 25th, 1238, he who was born Yaerud Agdji on the 2nd of June of the year 1172, third son of Yaerud Agdji who was Daweizu, who had been invested with the Mandate of Heaven at the age of fifty-three and taking the regnal name of Shaoxing, and who ruled in might and majesty for twelve years, passed into the beyond and became as proclaimed by his vassals ‘Weizong,’ Mighty Ancestor of the Liao Dynasty. His is the third row of spears in the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand.

The reign of Agdji II is considered underwhelming even by the most generous scholars, and approaches being called a disaster by the most critical. Exceptions are often made for Agdji I due to the circ*mstances of his rule and his life; it could not be easy for a man who spent most of his life unable to read, who knew almost nothing of settled governance, to transition to ruling a stable state. Daweizu’s failures as Emperor are, while acknowledged, also given their proper context as the actions of a man who was far out of his element who nevertheless sought to achieve logical goals which, if successful, would have greatly benefitted his people.

Agdji II is given few such allowances. Unlike his father, Agdji II learned to read at a much younger age; for almost his entire adult life (since he was 17) he had had the intelligent and thoroughly well-learned Huei, daughter of an Emperor, at his side; and he had even governed the state as his father’s factotum for several years before succeeding him. Most agree that he should have been better-prepared for rule than he proved. Agdji II’s long list of failures range from his commitment to incest, which would over time ravage the Yaerud and greatly damage their foreign relations; to his unwillingness to risk open conflict with Djoborin, which allowed Djoborin to murder his brother Ituk and steal Agdji's daughter Qadju, setting the stage for a full succession crisis; to his commitment to Khitan exceptionalism at the cost of the support of the Poles and Russians within the Jin Khidan Zhou, which bred smoldering resentment that would soon prove a problem for the Liao. With Huei at his side especially, Agdji should have done better.

But, though he did not, still he was afforded a Temple Name. Save for complete failures, the Liao always issued a Temple Name to ruling Emperors, and so Agdji was acknowledged for the part of his life in which he did not fail: before he reigned, when he rode as the great stalwart second of his father. He is remembered as the Mighty Ancestor, Weizong.

Chapter 13: The Da Irkin

Chapter Text

Weizong’s successor to the throne was his only full-blood brother, Ago. Chosen through the machinations of Djoborin at the moot of 1225 following the death of Daweizu--and over the preferred successor of both the old Emperor and new, Weizong’s son Diluguin--Ago was never meant to have ruled. Backed into a corner, he had been forced by circ*mstance to accept the nomination from the moot or risk civil war within the Jin Khidan Zhou, and had ever been resentful of the dishonor done to his brother Weizong--whom, to Ago, was but the slightest step less than his father in his love--and also to Diluguin, to whom Ago was fiercely loyal due to the support given to him by both prior Emperors.

And yet, true to the words of Father Dashi about the Yaerud bending the strings of fate, there was a strange serendipity in the selection of Ago. Although Djoborin had favored Ago only to weaken the claim of the line of Weizong to the throne, Ago was also quite possibly simply the best candidate for the position. Although Weizong had been naturally taller, stronger, more fit and more capable in war, this was one of his great weaknesses: everything which he believed he needed in life came simply to Weizong, and therefore he rarely put forth his full effort into his deeds.

Ago, despite his great skill, was somewhat slow to grasp new concepts, and had a methodical way of thinking. True achievement was challenging for him, and yet rather than fall behind, Ago struggled ever the more throughout his life to earn the praise and respect of his peers, and ever and anon he did so. All but every fault that Weizong had, Ago improved upon: charismatic and kind, Ago was nevertheless quick to punish transgressions. Yet he was also charitable in his victories, patient, and, perhaps above all, humble. He did not see himself as being worthy of the honor granted him, and as ever before in his life, this caused him to work all the harder to make himself suited for it.

And now was come the time for Ago to prove that he did indeed deserve the throne. His beloved brother was dead, and the time of burial was already upon them--and, unavoidably, the time of the moot to select the new heir to the Mandate of Heaven. Ago’s first challenge was quite possibly to prove his most difficult, as even now the possibility of civil war bubbled throughout the realm. Although his half-brother Djoborin’s military position was not so strong as it had once been, with Biaen the Beautiful of Kiev vacillating between supporting Djoborin and Diluguin, his position in the succession, with Weizong’s daughter Qadju as his bride, was stronger than ever. And the selection of Djoborin as heir to the throne would all but guarantee war, either in Ago’s life or after it. The future of the Jin Khidan Zhou, not merely its existence, but its very nature as a state, hung in the balance of one old man who did not even desire the throne.

Unlike Weizong, who often vacillated in his decisions, to his credit Ago acted immediately and decisively. Although he allowed himself a day of mourning for his brother, on the morning of the 26th of February he rose stoic and authoritative. Even as he rode from his seat at Plock to Huangjin Zhongxin to receive the submission of the city and court, he issued orders from the saddle: that his brother’s funeral be paid for from his own coffers; that his eldest living son and heir Uldjin succeed to the March of Podlyashe at the militarized border with the Lithuanian heathens; and, most critically, that his now-vacant seat in Plock, the capital of the Governate of Mazowsze (called by the Khitan Majaus), be granted to Shulu Orduor, son of Shulu Cha the Faithful.

The Shulu, more than any other clan, had sacrificed for the Liao: when the Second Liao Empire had collapsed in a wave of blood and rebellion from Tamatarkha through to Tibet, only the Shulu governate had remained loyal to Agdji Huangdi. Sheltering the heirs of Ituk Daerqa, the most trusted family of the realm, the Shulu had undertaken a daring campaign to march directly through the Persian Empire in order to reach their liege lord and offer him their spears. It was an impossible prospect, and yet one which, against all odds, the Shulu succeeded in. A bare few years after Daweizu’s death, none less than Shulu Cha himself, Daweizu’s sole friend among his governors, paid homage before the tomb of his liege.

Weizong had promised great honors to the Shulu, but in his life had not been able to deliver. In death, with the seat of Majaus vacant, there was now an opportunity to repay them, at least in some small part. In so doing--even if Uldjin was left infuriated that he did not inherit the much richer territory of Majaus--Ago hoped that a clear message would be sent about the rewards given to loyal servants.

In those early days, Ago also summoned Diluguin to court in order to serve as his chief military advisor. An extremely prestigious position, it was also a rationale for Ago to grant to his nephew a small fief within the capital’s surroundings, ostensibly as an official residence for when Diluguin could not stay at his seat in Sandomierz due to his duties at court. In reality, of course, the true rationale behind the grant was to ensure that Diluguin would have a loyal castle near to the capital from which to launch an attack should Huangjin Zhongxin declare for Djoborin, as well as to ensure that it was probable that, at the time of Ago’s death, Diluguin would be significantly closer to the capital than his uncle Djoborin.

While Ago’s three earlier edicts are known to have been issued on the road and thus have been his ideas alone, there is still great debate among scholars as to whether the grant of Galindia was Ago’s idea of Huei’s, as Ago had arrived at Huangjin Zhongxin by the time the order was issued. Most agree that Huei likely made the request, and her brother-in-law agreed with her. To be sure, in many ways Ago was to prove even more willing than his elder brother to take Huei’s advice, and though Khitan historians often harshly criticize this, it is undeniable that her suggestions were oft to the realm’s benefit.

The burial of Weizong occurred on the 8th of March, just under two weeks following his death. Lacking the broad European fame which belonged to Daweizu, and fraught with simmering undercurrents of fear about the inevitable moot following the burial, the affair was an entirely more somber one, with far fewer European delegates present: only Gotfred II af Estrid (lord of Ostergotland and nephew of Weizong through his half-sister Telbe) and the young Prince Maurikios Komnenos, heir to Emperor Andronikos II, and his mother Dosithea of Thessalonike were present.

After the short burial mass, in accordance with the traditions established during the burial of Daweizu, the body of the Emperor was removed from the palanquin which had carried him from Huangjin Zhongxin to the Mountain of Dreams at Galich. The new bearer of the Mandate of Heaven, Ago, stood at the front of the stretcher, while Weizong’s son and favored heir, Diluguin, carried the rear.

Upon entry to the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand, where Daweizu had famously bade his troops to part with their spears in a hundred great rows one hundred spears deep, the body of Weizong was carried between the second and third row of spears, signifying his place as the second regnal emperor in the west. Upon reaching the end of the row the myriad relatives, lords and foreign dignitaries were stopped, while Ago and Diluguin both ascended the steps to Weizong’s stone sarcophagus alone. Few in the crowd missed that they both wept as they laid the body of Weizong to his rest.

As they backed respectfully away from the remains of the Emperor, the time came, as tradition dictated, for Ago to pass out between the third and fourth row of spears, with his family and vassals behind him: to signal his ownership of the third sarcophagus, and his ascension as Emperor. And yet, to the shock and outrage of all, Ago turned away from the spears and made to walk around the pavilion to the exit.

When Ago made to move away from the immaculate rows of spears, a moment of bated breath passed before Djoborin cried out in victory. “If you deny the Mandate,” he screamed in ecstatic glee, “the selection is broken and the will of Agdji our father is forfeit!”

There had been many men who had ridden with Ago to war, and had known him to laugh even as he hewed down the foes around him, such was his joy in life; war, they said, did not call him as a joy unto its own, but as an obligation, and his true love was in comradery. In battle or out, Ago was always jovial, always smiling. Yet no less than five lords who rode with Ago made testimonies, three of which survived to the present, that insist that the rage which they saw from jovial old Ago in that moment caused them to fear for their own lives.

Upon hearing Djoborin refer to their father as Agdji rather than the proper honorific Daweizu, Ago entirely forgot himself. Lunging forward, he took Djoborin unawares, landing an immense blow to his jaw that fractured it, sending the younger man sprawling backward.

Ago was not called “the Ferocious Giant” for nothing; although, like his elder brother, Djoborin was naturally stronger and taller than Ago, he had not spent his entire life honing his body for war. Even at sixty-one, Ago was corded with muscle, and now, in his rage, he held none of his strength back. Djoborin was knocked aside like a toy, and as he flew he tripped over the leading spear of the third row. Although the field of spears were inverted, with their points stuck firmly in the ground, one-hundred of the ten-thousand were not: the leading spear of each row was point-up, a symbol of respect and readiness to follow the will of the Emperors buried there even in death. It was into this lead spear which Djoborin crashed, cutting his back deeply and loosing a torrent of blood that stained the ground beneath the bent spear crimson.

“DO NOT DARE TO DEFILE THE NAME OF OUR FATHER!” Ago cried, screaming with such thunder that it seemed the enclosed pavilion rocked around his cries. “BOW YOUR HEAD AND BEG FORGIVENESS FOR YOUR LIES, FOR YOUR DECEITS, BEFORE THE DA IRKIN! BEG TO BE WORTHY TO SPEAK THE NAME DAWEIZU!”

Ago aimed a savage kick to the disoriented Djoborin’s belly, and he doubled over at the immense blow, retching at the ground before him. “BEG!” Ago screamed.

The sudden assault by Ago upon Djoborin initially stunned the assembled lords, but it rapidly galvanized the would-be supporters of Djoborin, and, in a sorrowful precedent, for the first time arms were drawn in the pavilion of the ten-thousand. Djoborin’s supporters rushed to his aid, and this, naturally, caused the supporters of Ago and Diluguin to draw steel as well. As Ago was pulled back forcefully by Diluguin and Shulu Orduor, Biaen the Beautiful (having finally picked his side), Sen Dorhan, and Siau Uldjin surrounded Djoborin as he gathered himself up. Both sides pointed naked steel at the other, and all hopes for peace appeared lost.

Djoborin shakily stood, massaging his jaw. “So… so you abdicate,” he spoke slowly, clearly forcing every word out through pain, “and seek to place this whelp on the throne?” Djoborin asked, co*cking his head toward Diluguin, who bristled… and none-too-circ*mspectly pointed his spear directly at his uncle. “Is this how our father’s eldest children rule? Through fist, tyranny and treason?”

Ago’s wrath was cold, and in that moment, uncharacteristically piercing. “I abdicate nothing,” Ago replied. “I was given the Mandate of Heaven, which I accept; I bear it, and bear the weight of Heaven. I was not elected as Emperor. The Mandate is determined by vote, but the Empire is a choice. I choose not to be Huangdi. I am the Da Irkin, the Lord Regent, for the Emperor who will come.”

“But if we speak of what a man rules like,” Ago whispered, “let us speak of how you rule. Let us speak of Uroen. Let us speak of my daughter, who now lies dead, mutilated in the fields of the Poles, who was your own wife.”

“Your grief has no place in the successi—” Djoborin began, but Ago’s cold, murderous eyes, for once, silenced him.

“I gave you Uroen, despite myself. Forever will I be loyal to the house of Weizong, to my death. You were our brother’s enemy, and yet I gave her to you. You swore to me when she was betrothed to you that you would serve our brother honorably. And you also swore to protect her, and promised that should you fail in either duty for so long as Weizong lived, anything you would give to me as blood-price. Do you deny it?”

Djoborin’s face grew pale. An empty promise he had thought it, as he always did. What he had needed was a wedge between Ago and Weizong, which he had sought in Uroen. She was just a tool, as everyone was to him. He did not even consider it unfortunate when she was captured and tortured to death by King Bogumil during the sack of Galich, as he warred with the Poles; she had not driven the wedge between Ago and Weizong that he had desired, and her death opened the path for him to marry Weizong’s own daughter, Qadju, allowing him to claim his heirs as successors to the bloodline of the Qin.

But, foolishly, he had allowed there to be witnesses to the oath. Even as Ago spoke, Uldjin and Biaen, who had both been present, widened their eyes and slowly lowered their swords.

“Is this true?” Sen Dorhan asked incredulously, waving his sword around frantically.

“What does it matter?” Djoborin spat, drawing his own sword, “I will fight to the death against it.”

“And this is how your lord would honor his oaths!” Diluguin laughed.

Djoborin made to spit at his nephew, but in that same moment the point of a sword was placed firmly against his ribs.

“If you seek to break oath with our brother,” Biaen said sorrowfully, “the bearer of the Mandate of Heaven, I will kill you myself.”

“So this is how we choose our rulers?” Djoborin asked snidely, baring his teeth--though very carefully not moving. “We place one claimant at the point of a sword and slay him, and the lords of the realm sit together and make play at fanciful tales that the last lord left standing was chosen by merit, and not the sword and the dagger? What precedent to set!”

Ago’s half-brother looked at him venomously. “You have broken my jaw and stained my blood on this sacred ground,” he said. “If that is not enough, take my life also. I hope you and all yours choke on the ashes of the Yaerud that will follow in fratricidal blood.”

Yet Ago was in no mood to be goaded. “I said nothing about death,” he spoke quietly. “Your pain and your blood was the price you paid for dishonoring our father. The price I demand as my right for your failure as a man of honor and a husband of faith is an entirely different one: you will sink to your knees. You will kowtow to me as the Da Irkin. You will beg forgiveness for the dishonor you gave our father. You will beg forgiveness for your failure as a man, to protect the daughter I gave you in faith of your strength. And finally, you will cast your vote in the name of Diluguin to succeed me as the bearer of the Mandate. And then you will leave this place.”

“I will do no—” Diluguin began, but again Ago cut him off. Striding forward he whipped up the Spear of the Destroyer, the spear of his father Daweizu, and skillfully placed its point firmly in the center of his brother’s neck.

“Your life is forfeit,” Ago said evenly. “You will cast your vote as a man of honor, or you will die as a creature without any. I do not wish to kill you, but if you have no honor, I will. And let it be not said that I failed to give you the choice.”

And so, with hate in his eyes, the Child of Prophesy, Djoborin, knelt and begged forgiveness from the Da Irkin.

Much could be said--and has been--about how quickly the precedent of the Khitan succession broke down. Some scholars have argued that there was really no precedent at all, because the succession of Weizong was an isolated case: rather than being the first in a sequence of largely stable successions, the very first succession was immediately followed by a succession thrown into total chaos. A drama could not have been written to have more unexpected and suspenseful turns than a throne denied, blood and steel drawn in the holiest Khitan site in the world, the betrayal of a lord over his dishonor, and an oath extracted at spearpoint, all occurring in less than ten minutes. Many thousands of historians throughout the centuries have thanked the heavens that Maurikios Komnenos was present, and therefore that the tale was circulated far and wide outside of the Jin Khidan Zhou.

True to his oath, once Djoborin had kowtowed and abased himself before Ago (to his everlasting humiliation), he was forced out of the Mausoleum. The remainder of the Khitan lords passed to the funeral-house, where for once they largely ignored the food and drink and instead debated for hours about the circ*mstances of the succession.

A few of Djoborin’s most stalwart lords, Dorhan among them, insisted that the oath was extracted from him illegally, but most of the realm agreed that, as blood-price, Ago was within his rights to demand anything of Djoborin, even his life, and they accepted his vote. More contentious was Ago’s decision to fight his brother within the Mausoleum, as well as his uncertain claim about divesting the Mandate of Heaven from the Imperial title itself; all assembled lords roundly spoke out against the drawing of steel within the Mausoleum, and largely placed blame for that upon Ago. Thus, although Djoborin’s power was broken for the moment, Ago had not united the realm behind him.

Yet still--though narrowly, it must be admitted--what Daweizu called for came to pass. Diluguin was selected as the successor of Ago.

It was ultimately a confluence of factors which saw Diluguin win the day. Had not Djoborin threatened to break his word with the elected ruler of the Jin Khidan Zhou, his own brother--a degree of dishonor all but unheard-of--it is likely that even had he casted his vote for Diluguin, he still would have carried many of the remaining lords. Yet he was humiliated, seriously wounded, and outed as a dishonorable man simultaneously, and many lords (at least temporarily) turned against him as a result. Although many did not wish to support either Ago or Diluguin, either due to Ago’s breaking of the peace of the Mausoleum or his claims to be the “Da Irkin” instead of Huangdi, few could decide upon a worthy alternative.

There was Asalup Daerqa of the line of Ituk, whom was quickly seized upon as a potential option despite not being of Yaerud blood under the same principle Ago had utilized to become Da Irkin: so long as Ituk claimed only to be regent and not Emperor, why not have him sit the throne temporarily and elect Djoborin later? Although Asalup himself flatly refused to participate in such a scheme and proclaimed his loyalty to Diluguin and the chosen house of Daweizu, it was immediately obvious that Ago’s decision to declare himself Regent instead of Emperor was to have greater consequences.

The only other choice any of the assembled lords could settle upon was Weizong’s younger son Qutug. Yet Qutug was quite underwhelming as an individual, and, as Weizong himself predicted, was largely harmless due to his missing eye; few lords seriously wished to support him while wars to the east seemed inevitable. And so instead, reluctantly, a majority (although, critically, far from a unanimous number) of the assembled lords knelt before Diluguin and proclaimed him their chosen successor.

The lords of the realm were correct to criticize Ago for his brute show of violence in the Mausoleum, as well as his decision to appoint himself Regent, separate from the Imperial title; the latter especially would have significant consequences. Yet, in retrospect, excepting Ago’s violence against Djoborin, it is difficult to imagine how he could have performed better. Djoborin was the apex of the sons of Daweizu’s body. It was, in all but any normal circ*mstance, impossible to outmaneuver him. How many times had Weizong attempted to do so and came up lacking, or indeed even found himself wrapped up in a trap Djoborin had already laid for him? None was a match for him in intrigue.

Djoborin's one great misfortune was to be born at the end of Daweizu's life, for had he been born in the fullness of his father's youth it is undeniable that he would have had everything lavished upon him as the natural heir to the throne. But by the time Djoborin was born settlement was at hand, and Daweizu had already spent decades investing in the succession of Weizong. Although Daweizu believed in the concept of the strongest ruling, by the time he was an old man he had begun to see strength not merely as a function of one's own self, but also surrounding circ*mstances--the consequences of what a particular line inheriting the throne would mean, from claims to alliances. The election of Agdji II meant the election of Diluguin, and Diluguin was the son of Huei, of joint Han-Khitan blood and the heir of both the Liao and the Qin; he had a strength of being that transcended his own not-insignificant personal worth, and which prevented Daweizu from turning to Djoborin even after he realized how impressive his son was. And so Djoborin always despised his youth, and those whom he perceived had stolen his rights from him: his father and his elder brothers, to be sure, but most especially Diluguin and his mother Huei.

In the context of Djoborin's tremendous mental facility, skill with intrigue, and hostility to his family, honest, jovial Ago was perhaps the only one who could have stared him down and retained even partial support from the remainder of the nobility. Ago beat Djoborin not through a well-thought-out plot, which Djoborin would have turned on its head all but instantly, but by simply being a fair, kind man, something Djoborin was not. Aside from denying the title of Huangdi, Ago did not plan any of the actions he took that day, and instead reacted merely on instinct, and his feelings as a father. These Djoborin did not expect; ultimately, they revealed his deficiencies, and led to his (temporary) fall from grace.

Ago’s reign might well be judged solely on the basis of avoiding civil war within his lifetime, a prospect few believed possible at the time of Weizong’s death; if this is the metric by which one measures Ago’s success, less than two weeks into his reign, he might already be considered a stellar ruler.

As if a sign to mark the restoration of Weizong’s line, it’s said that Diluguin’s third son was born the same hour that he returned to his seat from the funeral of his father. In the honor of the line of Agdji son of Agdji, the child was named for his illustrious grandsires.

Yet this was not to say that there were not immediately obvious tensions within the realm, even after Diluguin was proclaimed the heir of Ago. Not all of the lords of the realm (indeed, fewer than half) had supported Diluguin, which was a true break in precedent: Agdji the Elder, Agdji the Younger, and Ago had all been unanimously backed by their respective vassals as the successors to the throne. Arguably Dashi had as well, if one discounts Tianzuo Last-Emperor and the few fools that remained behind with him among the Xia. Thus, although by the laws of the realm Diluguin was to inherit, there were serious tensions surrounding the prospect.

One of the greatest lords to withdraw their support was none other than Ago’s own son and heir, Uldjin. Unlike his father Uldjin believed that Ago was indeed worthy of the throne, and dishonored both himself and his children by refusing to name himself Huangdi. He was likewise insulted that the Shulu, however honorable and loyal they had proven themselves, were placed above the blood of the Yaerud in precedence, and frequently voiced his view that he should be Lord of Majaus. Thus, although Uldjin loved, respected and honored his father, politically he became his most vocal rival, supporting a Yaerud-first policy which was most closely aligned with his uncle Djoborin, whom he supported following the moot.

Djoborin himself was the other great source of tension. The physical beating in the Mausoleum had left him wounded, while the psychological shame and betrayal by his own loyalists had given him a victim complex that was rapidly escalating to the point of paranoia. Defeated for the second time at the succession moot, Djoborin’s shame had left him somewhat prone to impulsive acts, and worse still had turned Ago and Diluguin from being competing claimants to outright hated rivals in his eyes. With his great intellect at his disposal and the cruel cunning to do whatever needed to be done in order to sit the throne, the days of Djoborin as a legal threat were perhaps at an end--but the days of his extralegal means to seize power were only beginning.

Although insofar as possible Djoborin shut Ago and any loyalists to him out of Galich in order to limit their knowledge of his plans, it was obvious even without seeing Djoborin that he was not going to give up the throne that was his one real desire, even after a great humiliation such as he had faced.

Thus, although Ago had always planned to honor his brother’s widow, in the days following the succession moot Ago placed especial emphasis upon giving Huei legitimate positions within the bureaucracy to ensure that she had the legal authority to oversee affairs in his absence. Although he did not go so far as to name her as his regent (he claimed that he had no regent, as he was himself nothing more than a regent for the true Emperor, and at his incapacitation he should be removed and way made for the succession of Diluguin), in effect Ago gave Huei the powers of a factotum.

Why Ago did this when the realm’s loyalties were so fractured is not clear. Few Khitans approved of Huei, even those who believed that it was important that the regnal line of the Jin Khidan Zhou hold the blood both of the Liao and Qin. Several theories have been put forward, from the bawdy claims that Ago and Huei had an affair and that Diluguin was really Ago’s son (supposed evidence for why Ago was so loyal to his “nephew” over his own child, Uldjin), to the more reasonable claim that both Daweizu and Weizong had honored Huei, and Ago, who always tended to second-guess his own instincts and instead follow in the footsteps of the father and brother he worshipped, chose to simply continue giving her the respect they had. Few sources speak of Huei, and none of them treat her fairly; it is unlikely that we will ever know the exact reason why Ago kept her so close, yet it is undeniable that, behind Diluguin himself, she was his closest advisor.

As ever when it comes to the early days of the Khitan Emperors in the west, with so few written records to account for their deeds, it is difficult to determine exactly who at court was behind any given action. Did the Emperor truly champion something, or was it a powerful court advisor who was behind the decision, with the Emperor nothing more than a name to rubber-stamp their deeds with? It is a never-ending historiographic debate as to how much power the immediate successors to Daweizu actually had within the state, made all the harder by the voluminous vitriol against Huei, who was ever seen as the chief instigator of any unpopular decision.

In Ago’s first major act as Lord Regent, however, we can be reasonably sure that it was the Da Irkin himself who made the decision--we even know that many of his advisors spoke out against it. Violating the principles set down in the Conclave of Galich which prohibited the Khitan to wage war against their Christian neighbors, Ago raised the banners of Huangjin Zhongxin and declared that he would “expunge” the line of Bogumil from the throne of Poland, and lay the Gryfita Kings low before the Dragon.

The decision to break with the restrictions lain out in the Conclave of Galich was not made lightly. Unlike his brother, Ago tended to view the agreements of the Conclave as utterly binding, and typically would not have moved against any Christian realm for any circ*mstance. But the dishonor of the Gryfita, to torture his own daughter to death, had been smoldering within him in the four years since her passing. It was a dishonor which demanded reprisal, a feeling any Christian ruler would have understood.

Ago sent missives to both Rome and Constantinople forewarning the Pope and Patriarch of his actions, and promising that “no land will be taken from the Poles nor any but the guilty put to the sword.”

Yet even then, the decision could have gone horribly wrong, and almost did. Although Urbanus III was a cruel and unholy man unworthy of the robes of a priest, much less a Pope, and cared nothing for the fate of the Poles, surprisingly the Patriarch--traditionally the most pro-Khitan of the Christian clergy--was greatly troubled by Ago’s decision, and pointed out to Emperor Andronikos II that, by Ago’s same logic in invading Poland, any slight against the Khitans could be met with justified war if the Komnenoi bowed their heads and accepted the actions of Huangjin Zhongxin.

Fate again proved to be Ago’s ally, however, as the young prince Maurikios, who had been present at Weizong’s funeral, persuaded his father that Ago was an honorable man, and spoke harshly against his half-brother, the most infamous Khitan for his extralegal raids against Poland and Hungary. Maurikios was convinced that Ago spoke the truth about his daughter’s torture, and was convinced that he would limit the war precisely as he had promised. Despite the boy being but ten years of age, Andronikos trusted to his counsel, and the Patriarch did not condemn the war.

In the dark days to come, Maurikios's journey to Galich, as well as his courage in defending the Khitan here, would pay dividends he could never have imagined.

As the armies of the Lord Regent soon marched into Poland and smashed apart the meagre host which Malowuj had been able to gather for the defense of his capital at Kalisz, one of his great lords, Wojciech Kujawski of Lubusz, was captured. Severely wounded as he led a counter-attack so that his liege could flee the lost field, many of Ago’s men begged that the Lord Regent put the man out of his misery, and in the process offer him as a sacrifice to Father Sky for the success of their campaign.

Yet, however pitifully close to death he was, the man begged for mercy. Although the Khitan warriors continued to bray for his blood, Ago disabused them. “I do not see a man named Bogumil, nor his sons,” Ago was reported to have said. A ransom was charged to Wojciech for his freedom--and this, Ago insisted, only because Wojciech took up arms against the Khitan in the first place--but freed he was, and permitted to go in peace, well before the war was concluded. The only charge placed upon his freedom was that he might not return to attempt to defend his liege.

More than assuaging the fears of the Pope and Patriarch, Ago’s decision not to kill Malowuj was well-respected by his son and heir, Wladyslaw, who after that point was respectful to the Khitan.

The Polish realm had been in steep decline ever since the Gryfita took the throne. With Christians suspect of their conversion, the Pomeranian dynasty had found few friends, indeed even within their own realm. Constantly preoccupied with reconquering their poor homeland to the northwest, they were endlessly taken advantage of by Lithuanian barbarians to the east, the Hungarian Kings to the south (who on no less than three occasions had forced Gryfita Kings to bow to them as tributaries), or even lesser Imperial vassals. Poland had been entirely incapable of defending itself or its lands since the middle of the reign of Wlodzimierz, the first Gryfita King; by the time he was unceremoniously removed from the throne (and later assassinated, likely by his own kinsmen), the decline was complete.

The ease with which Ago swept aside the Polish defenses spoke to the Khitan skill in arms less than the utter disorganization of the Polish state and all-but-total absence of royal writ. In total, less than 500 soldiers ever stood against Ago’s great host of 7,000 men, and that host was but the forces available from Ago’s royal demesne!

Indeed, the reputation and power of the Gryfita Kings was so poor that, despite being successfully spirited out of Kalisz before the castle was sacked, King Malowuj and his infant son Sedzimir were betrayed by their own household guard in exchange for a few meagre coins, delivered right into the arms of Ago.

The boy was led to a separate tent, and thus was not present as his father was presented to the Da Irkin in chains, to receive the judgement of the father whom his own father had deprived of a child.

As Malowuj was roughly thrown to the ground before Ago, his arms and legs bound in chains, the old Lord Regent stood and walked before him.

“You are the one called Malowuj, who swore to his vassals that he would restore the eastern marches?” Ago asked, not without mockery; a border Khitan who knew the Polish tongue translated for him. “Your own people have sold you to me for a pittance. Less than five hundred men risked their lives for your own. Was it simple arrogance that led you to believe that you could contest the will of the Pope, or does your insanity run deeper?”

Malowuj’s face darkened. “The crown on my head was placed there by the Pope himself, barbarian,” the King replied. “Do not speak to me of violating the Pope’s will. Your brother has spent the past decade carving away at our border, dishonoring His Holiness’s will endlessly, and never was he punished. What am I meant to do when your own rule is so incompetent you cannot rein in one of your own?

“We had but one King of my House before the Khitans came. In Wlodzimierz’s own lifetime Prester John came riding out of the steppes and denied to us the east. Any of Wlodzimierz’s successors could have retaken it, but we were denied the chance. And then your own lords constantly betrayed the pact while you did NOTHING!”

Malowuj spat at Ago’s feet, and the assembled Khitans gasped. “My father did not torture your daughter to death to spite you,” the King said. “He did it because she was wife to the Lord of Galich, whom we hate above all else. We did not know he had no heart until it was too late. Avenge her on my body if you must.”

Despite the great dishonor done to Ago, the Lord Regent was greatly impressed by Malowuj’s bravery--and, truthfully, stung by his words. It was true that both Daweizu and Weizong had failed to enforce the sanctity of the Conclave among their vassals.

“You must die,” Ago said finally. “You and your boy. Your line must end--I began this war to that end, and I will see it done. But I will make it swift. And I will promise this: I will take it upon myself to guard your people, and give them the safety which our coming has denied them.”

Malowuj was honorably beheaded by Ago’s own hand, and consciously was killed first so that his infant son Sedzimir might have the chance to be named King before he passed. Sedzimir was given a day left of joy in life, playing with many of the Khitan children that camped with the host, before being put to sleep with a deep draught of alcohol that night and smothered to death with his pillows, thereby ending the line of Bogumil the Torturer.

At Sedzimir’s death, the throne automatically passed back to Branimir “the Tormentor” (one gathers a picture of the ill rule of the early Polish Kings through these unflattering epithets), great-grandfather of Sedzimir, who had ruled from 1225-1228 before being forced to abdicate in favor of his son Bogumil. Branimir was understandably furious at the murder of his grandson and great-grandson, even if he was also pleased about the throne finally returning to his hands. He declared that he would “staunchly resist” the invasion of the Khitan, calling his banners and seeking aid from the Holy Roman Empire to resist Ago’s host.

Yet predictably, no assistance from the Empire ever came: the weak Emperor, Markward von Hohenzollern, was in hiding while the realm was divided and facing four separate conflicts. With the Pope utterly indifferent to what was happening in Poland, no German lord was prepared to raise a finger against the Khitans.

Meanwhile, as Ago’s host ransacked the countryside the Lord Regent had begun to grow fat indeed on the proceeds of the conflict. Capturing lords and castles alike, the money from captured lords’ coffers rapidly flowed into Huangjin Zhongxin, easily paying for the war in a matter of a few weeks. Ago made it clear through messengers sent to Branimir that he would occupy the entirety of Poland if he had to, and that his patience--and mercy--slipped away with every new castle he was forced to invest. Although he was becoming wealthy off of his sacking of Poland, he claimed that he did not desire to war with a Christian for longer than he must, and begged the King to accept peace.

This Branimir reluctantly did, and not long after swearing to “staunchly resist” Ago--when no levies whatsoever appeared to his defense, the King acknowledged that all was lost. On the 28th of August 1238, Branimir surrendered to the Lord Regent.

Poland’s fate in the ensuing peace was an interesting one. It cannot be said that the Kingdom was let off easily, as King Branimir was forced to pay homage to the Lord Regent and promise over one-third of the entire yearly take of the Kingdom to the Jin Khidan Zhou as repayment for the expenses of the war and a token of apology for the murder of Uroen.

Yet in some ways it could truly be said that at the conclusion of the war Poland was in a better position than it had been when the war began, for in exchange for the tributary relationship, Ago undertook the most important step that he could in order to protect the Poles: he declared himself their guarantor, the defender of the tributary relationship between Kalisz and Huangjin Zhongxin. No longer would it be legal for Khitan vassals to engage in war with the Polish Kingdom, and if any enemies should threaten the Poles--even other Christians, despite the Khitan’s prior refusal to become involved in intra-Christian conflicts--the Khitan would be obligated to defend them.

It would certainly be possible to read too much into this relationship. Although Branimir was forced to pay his respects (and a large part of his treasury) to Ago, this was a repayment for a slight: Branimir was not even ostensibly a vassal of Ago, unlike the relationships which the Kings of Hungary had tried to force on the Poles in the past. Although it is true that Ago extracted an oath from Branimir that the Poles would assist in defending the Jin Khidan Zhou should it be attacked by barbarians, the relationship was not significantly reciprocal. Yet it is nevertheless undeniable that the Peace of Kalisz marked the first direct treaty between the Polish and Khitan nobility, and was the beginning of a formal relationship between the two peoples which would come to last for centuries.

Unfortunately for Ago, the stability of this new relationship might soon be tested. The Mongols have moved to border Sen Dorhan’s territory in Turov.

The Principality of Smolensk had been carved out by adventurers of the House of Gediminaitis in the mid-1100s (not long after Dashi first appeared on the outskirts of Emil) during the period of greatest Lithuanian expansion, supplanting the Russian principalities in the region. Ruled since that date by a succession of Lithuanian lords, Smolensk had been left largely unmolested by both the Turburur Khanate and the Jin Khidan Zhou--the former because Smolensk was the largest and most stable realm of the Lithuanians, and the successors of Daweizu because the realm was too far north-and-east to be a target.

On October 10, 1238, the long isolation of Smolensk came to an abrupt end. The Mongols under Jochi slammed through the meager defenses of the realm and sacked the capital at Tarusa, forcing Irmantas Gediminaitis to bow before them, and opening a narrow path at the ford of the Smolnya river between their realms and the realm of the Khitan, their archenemies.

Still insecure on the throne from the succession and with the loyalties of Djoborin’s allies (Dorhan himself among them) in question, the great Mongol host might be destined to set upon the Khitan before Ago is ready to meet them.

So soon after it seemed that the Hunayns were on a path to dominance in Africa and the Near East, disaster has struck that house. Caliph Razin died suddenly of gluttony (he had become noticeably more lax following his proclamation as Muhammed reborn), leaving his young and weak grandson Ahmed, the son of his second child Kwina, as the new Caliph. Both physically unfit and uninspiring, Ahmed is a weak Caliph unfit to continue the legacy of Razin, and already Razin’s realm faces a great threat to the north.

Although the Mongols were certain that Persia was unwinnable and that the end of Mongol dominance of that land was nigh, Bogen appears poised to prove them wrong. Immediately converting to Sunni Islam on his sixteenth birthday and handing out favors and titles as if they were sweets, he has stabilized his reign successfully. Already having produced an heir of his body, whom he has landed in order to guarantee a basis of support for Toluid rule within the realm, Bogen’s foresight could spell disaster for the Hunayns. He has in effect restored the strength of the empire of the Seljuks which collapsed some fifteen years before, and renewed the Persian threat to the Hunayn dynasty’s messianic revisionism of Islam at a time when it seemed all but impossible to contain the Isma’ili threat.

Early the following spring, word was received at Huangjin Zhongxin that the King of Hungary was seeking a bride for his son and heir, Jak Kornel. Although the King had not explicitly approached the Khitans, Ago went out of his way to offer the hand of his youngest daughter Cheumuyang, which the King eagerly accepted in order to tighten relations with the Khitan court.

Ago did this for many reasons, but chief among them were the continued violations of the conclave which Djoborin had brought about by fighting against both the Poles and Hungarians. Djoborin’s last offense to the Magyar King had been the capture of the passes of Peremyshyl from them, but unfortunately after his humiliation at the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand Djoborin had only grown more aggressive in his attempts to cause a diplomatic incident through breaking the terms of the Conclave, and had begun a protracted war for the control of Szepes which saw thousands of Khitan and Hungarians both dying needlessly in the mountain passes.

Why Ago did not punish Djoborin directly is not known, but it is possible that he hoped that leaving Djoborin isolated at the fringe of Khitan politics would be for the best. In this, he was quite possibly correct.

Cheumuyang’s betrothal to the heir of the Jak dynasty was not entirely a measure designed to contain Daweizu’s rebellious son, however: it represented the fourth such marriage between the Yaerud and the Hungarians. Marriage to the Magyars, who shared many cultural and linguistic traits with the Khitan, was becoming common. Yaerud dynasts were already heirs to the border march of Erdelyorszag, and rapidly ballooning Khitan influence in Hungary is tied closely to the reign of Regent Ago.

Luck continued to be on the side of the Khitans early in Ago’s reign, as Branimir I of Poland died less than a year after the pact with Poland was initiated. The juvenile Branimir II did not have the authority or power to renege upon the pact, and his regency council is forced to acknowledge its continuance as one of his first acts following his succession.

As with the pact itself, the importance of this can easily be overstated. Nevertheless, the pact’s continuation across the reign of two Gryfita and survival through the succession of Kings marked it with a degree of permanence which no Hungarian vassalization attempt had ever managed to achieve. Moreover, the minority of Branimir II caused the Polish nobility to rely upon the Khitans for protection from external threats even more than they previously had, thereby associating the Polish nobility with the Jin Khidan Zhou more closely, even if the Gryfita Kings were still struggling to find a way to free themselves from the economically punishing yoke of Huangjin Zhongxin.

Aside from the betrothal of Cheumuyang to the Prince of Hungary, Ago had spent most of 1239 planning his next military campaign alongside Diluguin.

It did not escape the Lord Regent that the Mongols were sitting uneasily on the other side of the Smolnya, nor that it appeared that Jochi had every intent of carving a swathe through the steppe clear through into Europe, if he could. Although the numbers Jochi had available to him paled in comparison to the men his father had once had at his command, the same could be said for Ago. While Huei concurred with him that the loss of Persia was likely greatly damaging to Jochi, scouts who had espied his campaign to capture the hillfort at Plock estimated that his numbers were still triple that of all the banners of the Jin Khidan Zhou. It would not be possible to reach parity with the Mongols before they arrived, but given the Mongol strength in numbers, it was clear that any little bit they could achieve would make the inevitable war easier.

Diluguin, supported by Huei, favored capturing the rich and well-fortified Lithuanian territory of Samogitia directly to the north, which would provide both men aplenty as well as gold and security for the capital.

Ago saw a better strategy in capturing the Lithuanian heartland, however, and the castles of its King there. Although Samogitia would provide more wealth and men over time, Lietuva itself was the heart of the Lithuanian state, and the King’s writ there was actually weaker. If the Jin Khidan Zhou could seize it, it would likely be possible to extract more immediate support from it than Samogitia--and speed was of the essence.

To Diluguin’s great displeasure, Ago also insists upon bringing Djoborin on the campaign. It is not out of any desire for reconciliation, however: Djoborin’s war for control of Szepes is ongoing, and it is simply Ago’s desire to force Djoborin to abandon his armies to his much-less-competent commanders instead of leading them himself. For so long as Ago can keep Djoborin preoccupied leading a flank in frigid Lithuania, he cannot lead his forces over the passes of Peremyshyl.

Yet Ago cannot avoid Djoborin for so long as he is serving as one of his commanders. Although their relationship begins stormy, of all things it is a hatred of Djoborin’s mother which brings the men (somewhat) closer together. Yildiz Baruq was Daweizu’s most talented wife, but also his most insane: Ago blames her for the death of Gulcicek, Agdji’s favorite wife, and his consequent spiral into despair, while Djoborin despises her for the entirely more practical reason that the suspicion that she was behind the murder had trailed him throughout his life: he largely blamed her for Daweizu’s refusal to permit him at court, despite his immense talents.

It would be entirely inaccurate to say that Djoborin forgave Ago, or that the two men began to get along. Over the course of the campaign they managed to learn to work together, however, which is more than can be said for the relationship between Djoborin and his nephew Diluguin, which was as stormy as ever.

As negotiations are being completed for the surrender of the King of Lithuania and the lands of the Lietuvai, word reaches Huangjin Zhongxin that the Roman Empire is under threat.

Despite his apparent weakness (or quite possibly because of it), Calipha Ahmad has declared a Jihad for the rich coastline of Kilikia, a territory which not only boasts great docks ready to provide its rulers with cogs to ferry men, but also control over many of the passes into the interior of Anatolia, only recently isolated by the Komnenoi. Should control of the passes be lost once more, the gradual restoration of control to the interior could come under serious threat.

Unfortunately, for all his apparent weakness and naivete, Ahmad might well have chosen the proper time to begin his war. The Roman court's attempt to peacefully reconcile with the Caucasian Christian realms has led Andronikos II to turn his eye to the west for expansion, and is currently preoccupied with a massive war in Italy, attempting to replicate the feats of Belisarius by forcing King Radolfo II of Lombardia to swear fealty to him. This has thrown not only the Roman Empire but also the entire Italian peninsula into a confusing war, with many minor lords constantly changing sides as the balance of power shifts between the two rulers.

Although Ahmad appears to be a weak man, if he can take advantage of these circ*mstances to seize Kilikia and reopen the passes to the interior of Anatolia, he will go a long way to safeguarding the Hunayn dynasty from the dangers of the resurgent Toluid Persia.

On May 23rd, peace was achieved with the King of Lithuania. In return for being raised up as one of the Great Lords of the realm and for a light hand regarding the conversion of his own men, chief Kirnis gada Talava agrees to break oath with his liege-lord and swear fealty to the Khitan instead.

It is the first major conversion of a non-Khitan Lord to the syncretic Tengrism of Huangjin Zhongxin--the only such case, in fact, after Baltaragis Jotiai of Sluck converted during the reign of Weizong. More critically, it is the first time that a Lithuanian had been raised to such great power within the realm, and the occasion is met with great unease among the Khitan. Precedent to this point had dictated that only Khitans (or at least men of the east, when one accounted for the Purgyal and the Daerqa) could be accounted what the Khitan called Tqosi, or great lords. Ago’s decision--made with the consent and agreement of both Huei and Diluguin--broke with this precedent strongly, ending the Khitan-supremacist policies of Daweizu and, to a much greater extent, Ago’s own beloved brother Weizong.

Although the actions would have rippling repercussions throughout the realm (much as Weizong’s earlier decision to allow Khitans fleeing the Mongols to be given as slaves to Poles and Lithuanians), it is generally agreed that Ago did not honor Kirnis out of any organized plan. Instead, Ago’s calculation appears to have been twofold: first, a strong lord was needed immediately in the event of a Mongol invasion, and a Khitan appointee would take decades to tame the territory.

What scant records exist seem to suggest an almost unbelievable second rationale: Kirnis gada Talava was a snake that made Djoborin look pitiful by comparison. Kirnis soon usurped Djoborin’s role on the royal council, and it is widely argued that Ago retained his service specifically to protect Diluguin against underhanded methods of attack from his uncle.

The relationship between Ago and Diluguin was always a close one, one which had been born far back in Diluguin’s childhood when Daweizu had proclaimed him the heir of Weizong. Ago’s fierce (Djoborin would have whispered “simple-minded”) loyalty to both his father and brother ensured similarly total loyalty to Diluguin, and the boy was even fostered with his uncle. Just as Weizong never doubted his only full-blood brother’s loyalty, neither did Diluguin ever doubt his uncle, to Djoborin’s intense frustration. Although Ago was technically his liege, Diluguin knew that his uncle never attempted to build a power base for his own sons, and always acted in Diluguin’s best interests. Privately, although the title had not yet been conferred upon him, Ago even referred to Diluguin as the Huangdi, the one for whom he was regent.

There is much to be said about the price of this loyalty. Ago’s relationship with his sons, while there was love there, was constantly strained. They contended that Ago treated his nephew more like a son than he treated his own children, and Ago could not even deny that they were correct. Ago’s eldest sons Uldjin and Qutugin despised the place Diluguin usurped from them, while his youngest sons Moshar and Ebegin had grown up with Diluguin almost like an uncle to them, and were proud of their father’s loyalty, even if there was friction about the extent to which their father honored Diluguin. Thus there was a divide even among Ago’s sons, and there was rarely peace on the topic of their father and Diluguin.

Yet however much some of them might wish it were not so, their father was Diluguin’s man, for better or worse, and it was to Diluguin whom he dedicated most of his time and attention, constantly seeking his opinion on his decisions and involving him in every level of the maintenance of the state in preparation for his ascent to the throne.

It was in the context of one of these many meetings on rule, isolated in the depths of the Imperial palace, in which Ago finally broached the topic of the Mongols to the east.

“They took the ford of the Smolnya over a year ago,” Ago said softly as he sipped tea--a precious resource, so far from China as they now were. “I believed that they would strike rapidly, but they appear content to destroy the houses of the usurpers. The Lithuanian tells me the Borjigin march on Tamatarkha even now, and the Suni are being pushed to the east. Our border marches are enslaving Khitan refugees again.”

“It is nothing less than they deserve,” Diluguin said evenly, leaning back far in his chair.

“I agree,” Ago replied, but his face was troubled. “But if the usurpers are destroyed and the Mongols are given their lands freely to herd, they will only grow in strength. They seem content to ignore us for now, but upon my death, you know what will happen. It will be worse if they are given the room to strengthen.”

Diluguin sighed. “Are you so certain that Djoborin will lead an armed rebellion? The very idea is unbelievable.”

“Nothing is sacred for him,” Ago affirmed. “None of our traditions matter. He will fight for the power he believes he deserves, even if Daweizu denied him. And men will fight alongside him, even, I am sure, some of our own house. I am not my father; I cannot stop them from rising against the rightful Huangdi.”

Diluguin was silent for a long time. Eventually he stirred. “What do you suggest? A preemptive attack against the Mongols? With less men, less horse, on the offensive in open plains? You are not Daweizu, you say, but neither am I. That is suicide for us, uncle.”

“For all his faults, Djoborin is a great warrior. If he would agree to lead a flank…” Ago began, but Diluguin cut him off.

“Djoborin will not lead a procession to market for so long as I breathe,” he said curtly.

And so the Mongols were left unaddressed, given room to strengthen.

That very same day, Djoborin received what he had long been awaiting: a legitimate heir of his own body. Born to Diluguin’s half-sister Qadju, although it will become evident with time that the child was neither the titan of intellect his father was nor was he a titan of body as his mother, he was still an exceptional lad, one who had both the blood of Djoborin and Weizong and who could be accounted as a legitimate heir of both houses, reasserting Djoborin’s claim for the throne.

Curiously, Djoborin chose to name him Tabuyen. Traditionally a woman’s name, it had been regarded as taboo to so name a child ever since Siau Tabuyen, Dashi Huangdi’s wife, had been chastened by Daweizu and chased from power when he reached his majority. Although the Siau had been protected and honored throughout every Emperor’s reign, even Daweizu’s own, they had never fully recovered from the dishonor that Tabuyen had earned their house, nor had they entirely forgiven that the Imperial house was not descended from Tabuyen, but Dashi’s baseborn concubine Dilek. Yet during this period no less than three rulers, two of them Yaerud, named their sons Tabuyen; given the strange choice of name, most historians have come to believe that naming one such was an coded show of support for those who stood against the royal line.

In May of the following year the Lady Huei, Last of the Qin, died of stress. It is rumored that she worked herself ragged attempting to strengthen the state for her son’s succession, but constantly stymied by Khitan lords who despised her influence, was unable to make significant process.

Regardless of cause, with her goes the last living memory of the Middle Kingdom among the Khitan, for none now live within the Jin Khidan Zhou who had ever done more than trade with the Middle Kingdom’s meanest border outposts. Soon--certainly within the lifetime of Diluguin--even those will be dead.

There is a great historiographic debate about when to delineate the end of the so-called “Early Imperial Period” of the Jin Khidan Zhou. Most scholars mark the period as ending with the conclusion of the reign of Ago’s successor, but some insist that, given the nature of the Yaerud as a house, their ambitions and claims, and the structure of their state, it should most realistically end with the death of Huei and the end of the living memory of China in the West. Although still the minority view, this argument has many serious proponents.

Even though she was despised, even the most critical Khitan acknowledged her importance to the rule of Weizong. Ago decreed that it be permitted that she should be buried in the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand, albeit in a small grove behind the temple and not within the Mausoleum itself. There her grave lies to this day, beside many graves of subsequent wives and paramours of the Imperial house, the first resident of what will come to be known as the “Orchard of Sighs.”

To the shock and dismay of Christendom as a whole, despite the apparent weakness of Caliph Ahmed, he is able to achieve a smashing victory in the Jihad against the Byzantines due to the preoccupation of Andronikos Komnenos with his war in Italy. Although Ahmed would prove insufficiently strengthened by his victory (he would soon be toppled by court politics, leaving his infant son in a long regency dominated by the other lords of the court), the victory is still a substantial one for the Hunayn. The conquest of Kilikia has forced open the passes into the interior of Anatolia and grievously weakened the Roman Empire at a time when it already faced extreme threat from a resurgent Persia.

For his foolhardy preoccupation with war in Italy even as the eastern Empire was under threat, Emperor Andronikos is soon deposed in favor of his sister Marina, who rapidly makes peace with King Rodolfo II and refocuses on the defense of the Empire. But as a woman, even a Komnenoi, her role in the state is not secure and her brother Andronikos schemes to restore himself to the throne. With the armies of the Roman Empire in tatters and the power of Sunni Islam resurgent thanks to the strength of Persia, if the Abbasid Caliph can regain control over his fractious vassals and declare a new Sunni Jihad, the Empire might prove incapable of surviving the onslaught.

This news is met with extreme alarm in Huangjin Zhongxin, especially as word reaches them shortly thereafter that Jochi Borjigin had in fact displaced the Suni usurpers and occupied Tamatarkha himself. Although the limited news received in Huangjin Zhongxin indicates that he has not torn down the Waypost of Agdji (rumors suggest that he realized that defiling a second monument of Daweizu would mean an immediate and total war against him and his house, regardless of the infighting among the Yaerud) it is still a great stain on the honor of the Khitan to have a Borjigin occupy not just one, but all three of their prior capitals. More dangerous still is the knowledge that the Borjigin currently directly border the territories of the Roman Empire in the Crimea at a time when Rome is weak and subject to serious threat.

Yet Diluguin remains unconvinced that a preemptive strike could prove successful against the Mongols in the open plains of the east, and they are still permitted to strengthen.

Later that spring Yaerud Qutug, Diluguin’s full-blood brother, raises further cause for alarm. Achieving the conquest of the rich lands of Samogitia on his own, Qutug catapults himself from a minor vassal and the eastern defender of Huangjin Zhongxin to the single greatest landholder in the realm, as measured by acreage. In wealth, his lands are “only” the second wealthiest, behind Huangjin Zhongxin and the capital’s hinterlands.

Although Diluguin and Qutug have traditionally had a cordial relationship, they are not what could be called close; Diluguin was raised among Ago’s family, while Qutug was raised by Weizong himself. Further, Qutug was always bitter toward his father for giving him land only because Weizong was confident that he would not be a threat to his elder brother; unlike Ago, Qutug could not find it in himself to fully respect his father’s decision of which child to support in the succession.

Blinded in one eye from a duel with Lithuanians early in his life, Qutug should never have been a serious contender for the throne. But he has ruled well and wisely, and his newfound wealth and power has swayed some lords--particularly those who cannot support Djoborin following his dishonor, but also do not favor Diluguin--to favor him. Although the succession of Diluguin has already been established, it is not clear whether Qutug will support his brother should Djoborin rise against him, or even if the realm will declare Qutug Diluguin’s successor instead of one of Diluguin’s own children.

In a dual ceremony, Ago’s third son Moshar is married to the heir to the duchy of Nyitra, while Yaerud Moshan, Diluguin’s eldest child, is finally married to his late half-uncle Ituk's daughter Siaugu.

Moshar’s betrothal to another Hungarian Lady is merely a continuation of Ago’s pro-Magyar policy, and merits little mention save to note that Moshar was a loyalist to Diluguin, and it is possible that Ago specifically chose him for the marriage in the hopes that it might provide Diluguin important support during the succession.

Moshan, though, is an entirely different matter. The first son of Diluguin, Moshan was born to a Lithuanian woman whom Diluguin was smitten with on campaign and took to his bed. Although there was no real love between them, Diluguin fought furiously with his father over his marriage to her and refused to put her aside, even at the threat of losing his inheritance, preoccupied--as he would be for the rest of his life--with dishonoring neither himself nor his wife, whom he referred to as "his choice." When Moshan was born a white-skinned dwarf, Weizong famously declared that it was divine punishment for Diluguin’s refusal to maintain the blood of the east.

Yet as with the boy’s mother, Diluguin refused to repudiate the child in any way, and also called the boy, even deformed, a beloved choice that he had made, and would not renege upon. Indeed, despite being a dwarf, Diluguin has even chosen to betroth him to the daughter of Ituk, the Lady of Belz, a strong political match that marks Moshan as the main claimant to Djoborin’s lordship of Peremyshyl. Diluguin appears to see no issue with Moshan being a pale-skinned dwarf, and the marriage could even be a sign that he intends to name Moshan his successor. If so, that would certainly cause an uproar throughout the Jin Khidan Zhou; ever since the days of Dashi, only warriors have ruled the Empire. A dwarf cannot sit a saddle, nor would men take his commands seriously; such a child inheriting would mark a true break with the militarized tradition of Imperial rule.

History does not record where the Great Plague of 1244 began. Khitanjin archaeologists operating out of the University of Krakow in 1973 were able to identify one of the origins by examining the bones of those buried in mass graves (as it happens, the epidemic tuberculosis of the period appears to have found its start in Nadruvia, just down the coast from Huangjin Zhongxin to the east). Yet the same study determined that there were multiple vectors, and even more shocking, multiple diseases entirely: although they appeared to not have been separated in the tumultuous accounts of the time, no less than three major diseases ripped through the Jin Khidan Zhou starting that year, including Camp Fever (epidemic typhus), Consumption (Tuberculosis), and Slow Fever (Typhoid fever). Historians posit that the Slow Fever likely originated in Sweden and that its spread within the Jin Khidan Zhou was limited--unlike that of the Consumption and Camp Fever--but there are precious few records, and no certainty. The origin of the other two diseases will likely forever remain a mystery, but the isolation of the origin of the typhus outbreak to Nadruvia is telling: the disease practically originated within the confines of Huangjin Zhongxin itself.

When refugees from the east began to swarm the city, even had Ago wished to do so, there was no time to close the gates: many peasants from Nadruvia were already present in the city, and hundreds more were entering by the day before they had showed any symptoms for the illness. In the cramped and overcrowded conditions of the capital (for the city had grown its population much faster than its scope) the diseases found great purchase, and by a month later the limited evidence in Khitan accounts suggest that all three diseases were rampaging unchecked. Countless Yaerud became ill with one strain or another, and soon the entire dynasty would be ravaged by the plague.

The plague(s) appear to have never penetrated deeper than the cool, marshy wetlands on the coat of the Baltic: Huangjin Zhongxin, Samogitia, and swampy Trakai. Some scholars have argued that it was the environmental conditions that made these lands particularly fertile fields for the diseases, but recent scholarship has suggested that it was, in fact, poor city planning by the architects of Huangjin Zhongxin, as well as overcrowding in its hinterlands, which most exacerbated the issue. As the capital and the richest territory of the realm, Huangjin Zhongxin was both the most overcrowded and most stratified city, with palaces for rich Khitans who resided there sometimes only a single street away from the slums of impoverished Lithuanians who had been displaced during the initial conquest. These poor conditions ensured that the diseases would take root, and the close confines of the city likewise ensured that the wealthy would not be spared once they began to rip through the populace. Yet those lords of the south were spared, because unlike the capital, their lands were still sparsely-populated: “suffering” from the demographic shift which had followed Daweizu’s invasion, when many Poles and Lithuanians had fled northwest ahead of the advancing Khitan horde.

At the time, however, the Khitan understandably did not view these diseases in a critical light. Within two weeks after the first appearance of the disease Ago was bedridden with Typhus, and from there more of the royal house began to perish: Ago’s two youngest sons Moshar and Ebegin (the only two of Ago's sons who supported Diluguin and his claim to Mandate); Diluguin’s sister Cheu’en (viewed as a particularly inauspicious demise, as Cheu'en was a child of prophesy herself, having been born just after Daweizu kowtowed before the Mountain of Dreams) and his half-brother Noilhar; Qutug’s daughter Bi’en; and even Diluguin’s second-born son Kail. Countless others were sickened, yet thankfully survived. To outside observers, it appeared as if divine punishment had been called upon the lines of the eldest sons of Daweizu, and, dangerously, as Ago lay between life and death, Djoborin began to stir in the south.

It is a testament to Ago’s immense fortitude that he survived almost a full year with typhus, never able to shake the disease but simultaneously refusing to surrender to it. Yet for all of his strength of body, the fourth son of Daweizu was an old man by that time, and ill-suited to a long battle with illness, especially when Huangjin Zhongxin was rife with three different epidemics, and bodies were being burned in the streets. Ago’s body has never been exhumed and thus it is impossible to determine whether or not he fell ill with another plague and that caused him to pass, or whether he simply proved incapable of resisting the typhus which he had been fighting so valiantly for the past year. Yet regardless of the circ*mstances, on the 22nd of March 1245, Yaerud Ago breathed his last breath of the black air of Huangjin Zhongxin, stinking with the smell of burning corpses.

On March 22nd, 1245, he who was born Yaerud Ago on the 2nd of April of the year 1176, fourth son of Yaerud Agdji who was Daweizu, who had been invested with the Mandate of Heaven at the age of sixty-one, who had declined the title of Huangdi in order that he might serve as Lord Regent, and who ruled in might and majesty for seven years, passed into the beyond. Ruling as regent for the Emperor to Come, in accordance with his own wishes he was granted no Temple Name, nor does any row of spears in the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand belong to him.

Ago’s reign was a short one, but in some ways it was more consequential than that of his predecessor, Weizong. It was Ago who established that an individual could bear the Mandate of Heaven while denying the title of Huangdi, a decision the bitter fruit of which would shortly come to ripeness--not all that Ago did was destined to be for the better.

Yet much of it was. Although not always intentionally, Ago, like his elder brother, was one of the Emperors who began to sow the seeds for reconciliation with the Poles and Lithuanians. Although Ago began his reign with the violent eradication of the line of the Polish King Bogumil, the subsequent treaty of protection between Huangjin Zhongxin and Kalisz began a history of dialogue between the Polish and Khitan nobility which would last centuries, while his decision to permit Kirnis gada Talava to be proclaimed as a Prince of the Realm with autonomy for his own vassals showed that there was room for advancement for those who were loyal to the Huangdi (or, in this case, his Regent). And ties extended beyond just Poland and Lithuania: during Ago’s reign many Khitans served faithfully as spouses for Hungarian lords and ladies, strengthening the ties between the two similar cultures.

Indeed, this gradual broadening of diplomatic scope under Ago has led to one of the most curious facets of his reign: although the Khitan name him only a regent and do not grant him a Temple Name or the honor of a row of spears in the Mausoleum, to the rest of Europe he was regarded as a ruler. In many diplomatic missives he is referred to as Ago I, and the court even legitimized this as the official foreign mode of address for him (judging, rightly, that Europeans would not understand the complex socio-legal position which Ago occupied). Thus, while Khitans refer to the succession of Emperors as Daweizu, Weizong, and the Da Irkin for Diluguin, European stylings of the succession show Agdji I, Agdji II, Ago I, and Diluguin I.

But just because Ago was denied the full honors of a Khitan Huangdi does not mean that the Khitan people did not immensely respect him--his humility and loyalty are legendary, even in realms as distant as France and Navarra. Diluguin’s first act following the death of his uncle was to proclaim Ago’s descendants as the only legal regents for the Imperial House: the elder sons of Purgyal Kyi, through Weizong, would rule; the younger sons, through Ago, would shepherd them.

Clearly this proclamation was more than simply a political move. Although Diluguin did expect Djoborin to make a move on the throne, especially with Huangjin Zhongxin in tatters and the Imperial house having been half-paralyzed for the better part of a year with the capital disease-ridden and in disarray, were it a political decision Diluguin could have granted the boon only to Ago’s son Uldjin in order to court his support. To give it to all of Ago’s successors was a tremendous honor, even if it was also extremely politic in that it implicitly suggested that the Lady Huei was not the only woman of import to trace one’s bloodline from, and that the only two full-blood brothers of Daweizu’s body likewise held a special bond with one another’s houses.

Chapter 14: The Hongwu Emperor, Pt. I - The Kinslayer's Gambit

Chapter Text

Upon Ago’s death, the Great Plague was still ongoing, and indeed could even be considered to be accelerating. Corpse-carts were a common sight even outside of Huangjin Zhongxin, while in the capital itself there were great burnings of bodies daily, with simply too many corpses to bury and too little healthy hands to dig graves for them. At least Typhus and Tuberculosis were both still ravaging the countryside (it is unclear whether Typhoid Fever was still present), and the normally overwhelmingly large and professional army which Daweizu and Weizong had organized had all but collapsed, with thousands of its men dead and daily desertions by the dozen. With the state verging on financial insolvency due to the breakdown of the taxation system in the midst of the plague, some soldiers even threatened violence over lack of payment and unsafe conditions (multiple times Ago, in his rare moments of lucidity over the past year, had attempted to order his soldiers to clear the streets of the capital of bodies, an order which they disobeyed every time it was issued).

It was this quite literally unhealthy situation which Diluguin inherited. Yet the circ*mstances of the new Huangdi’s inheritance were, if it can be believed, worse than they initially appeared.

Ago had always kept Diluguin close by his side, both to teach him about statesmanship and to ensure that he would always be well-placed to take the throne which he had been elected to upon the old man’s death. Under normal circ*mstances this would have worked in Diluguin’s favor, but when the plague began to rampage through Huangjin Zhongxin, it became a liability. Just as his own son Kail had died of the plague--a loss which Diluguin still mourned, especially as Kail was the only one of his sons who bore the features of the east, and he knew that there were those among the Khitan who whispered his line was cursed with “pale Khitans”--so too had Diluguin himself become infected, though as yet he fought the disease.

In the case of the fresh new Agdji Huangdi (for so Diluguin styled himself, as his father had), the records appear clear enough that he was stricken with Tuberculosis and not Typhus--by far the less deadly of the two diseases. Yet it still left the new Emperor with a bloody cough and weakened health, ailments which the Empire could not afford, because they implied both direct physical as well as moral weakness.

Djoborin in particular had latched on to this even before Ago’s death. Reviving the old claims of the Child of Prophesy, Djoborin argued that two children were born immediately after the Conclave of Galich: Diluguin and himself. Diluguin was born first, yes, by some three weeks--yet he, Djoborin, was born superior, and born directly of the body of Daweizu. Only one of the two children could be the child prophesied to lead the Khitan, and as disease threatened to lay Huangjin Zhongxin low, Djoborin persuasively argued that Tengri himself showed his displeasure with the line of Weizong’s son.

Although Diluguin anticipates conflict with Djoborin, he is in no position to demand that his uncle stop spreading his poisonous lies; however harmful they may be, the realm, and especially the once-prosperous royal demesne, is in a fragile state, and the Agdji Huangdi cannot afford a war now which might be postponed until later.

Diluguin’s first day as Emperor is principally spent negotiating with the Polish liaison in Huangjin Zhongxin for a continuation of their protection agreement. Despite the onerous tribute requirements, for the moment King Branimir has found the agreement profitable, as no foreign foe has dared attack Poland while the Khitans protect it; likewise, Diluguin needs any means possible of strengthening the royal treasury, and a guaranteed amount of income from Poland would serve to help ensure that the Jin Khidan Zhou can remain solvent. Although neither side anticipated the other viewing the agreement as profitable, happy coincidence allows them to agree to maintain the status quo without change.

This agreement is particularly beneficial to Diluguin, who is able to use the income from Poland to permit him to dip into his own treasury to pay the arrears of the army, thereby retaining their loyalty. He is even able to prepare for the funeral of Ago, and swift riders are sent out calling the Khitan to Galich in two weeks’ time in order to bury Ago and select Diluguin’s successor.

But Djoborin was not content to wait. Even as his nephew was negotiating with the Polish King, Djoborin had already received word that Ago had died. He had long stationed men loyal to him along the fastest roads north, east and west in position to relay his orders, and these relay teams soon raced from Galich with word that Djoborin, the Child of Prophesy, was making his play for the throne.

Of course, if Djoborin had simply claimed that he was the true Huangdi, few indeed would have risen for him; after his dishonor at the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand and twice being passed over in the succession, his claims were shaky. Instead, Djoborin actually took inspiration from Ago’s decision to name himself the Lord Regent. As the Mandate of Heaven and the Imperial title had been shown to be distinct concepts, Djoborin argued that, while the vote to select Diluguin as Ago’s successor had been legitimate, it had been a vote for who should bear the Imperial title which Ago was regent for--in reality, Djoborin argued, no vote was ever held for who should bear the actual Mandate after Ago's death. Whoever held the Mandate was the one empowered by its lords to act. Thus, although Djoborin acknowledged Diluguin as Huangdi and ruler of Huangjin Zhongxin, he claimed that he was actually powerless to act outside of his own fief, for the true successor to the Mandate was none other than himself, the real Child of Prophesy and destined leader of the Khitan.

This crafty argument won Djoborin support he would not have found elsewhere, and soon many arch-Tengrist lords flocked to his banner against the Sinophile court at Huangjin Zhongxin, which they had long mistrusted.

Djoborin’s rebellion was expected, even directly anticipated. What Diluguin had not expected was the betrayal of his brother, Qutug.

Ever since Qutug had taken the Duchy of Samogitia and its immense wealth, he had been perceived as a threat on some level by Ago. Yet Diluguin had always tempered Ago’s reactions to Qutug, arguing that his younger brother was an honorable man who would not betray the wishes of their father, and especially not of Daweizu. He had been given his titles specifically because he was known to be no threat to Diluguin, and Diluguin could not foresee him rising against him.

Yet rise he did. Refusing to support Djoborin’s “illegal madness,” Qutug nevertheless did declare for the throne himself, under the guise of attempting to retroactively shift the succession of the Jin Khidan Zhou to a system of “equal inheritance, as under the riders of the past,” wherein Diluguin would be deposed for attempting to hoard the inheritance for himself. This was an even more laughably weak justification than Djoborin’s, but one must understand the mindset of Qutug which led to his decision: constantly passed over in the minds of both his father and brother, given all of his land and power solely because he was perceived as nothing, Qutug had an immense inferiority complex which fed into all of his decisions. Moreover, although a child of Huei Qutug was also a devout Tengrist, and disapproved of the degree to which Christianity had pervaded the court under Daweizu, and believed his father and uncle had simply not worked diligently enough to isolate the state from Christian impositions--a state of affairs which he believed would be renewed under the rule of his brother. And at the same moot which selected Diluguin as Ago’s successor, Qutug was the lord who had received the second-most votes, leading him to believe he had a real chance to claim the throne and prove his worth.

Of the supporters of Djoborin, there were three lords of note: Biaen the Beautiful, who had over the course of his life always vacillated in both his lust and loyalties between his half-brother Djoborin and his nephew, Diluguin; Uldjin son of Ago, who viewed himself as a rightful claimant to the throne and supported Djoborin in the hopes that he would be proclaimed Djoborin’s heir as a reward; and Siau Uldjin, who had been a loyal lord under Daweizu but whom had grown more and more reactionary as he aged, and supported a return to the violent militarism of the past--it was rumored Djoborin had successfully courted him when he named his son and heir Tabuyen, after the famous Siau woman of the same name, Dashi’s treacherous bride.

Notably absent from this list are the house of Sen, rulers of Turov. Sen Dorhan I was a staunch supporter of Djoborin, even after his dishonor at the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand, but Dorhan I was old, and had died in 1242; his son Sen Drola-an was also a loyalist to Djoborin, but after demanding to be proclaimed Djoborin’s heir in exchange for his support and being denied, Drola-an turned to drink and depression, and committed suicide less than two months before Ago finally passed, on February 5th. His son, Dorhan II, was a stupid child of only three years, whose regent was a Purgyal of Volyn--Weizong’s kin. Thus were the forces of Turov spared for Diluguin, when otherwise they would have promised Djoborin their spears.

Qutug had fewer supporters. Some historians and sociologists have argued that evidence indicates that Djoborin intended to institute a system in the Jin Khidan Zhou not unlike the Shogunates of Japan, wherein there was the formal legal ruler (the Huangdi) who had great spiritual authority but de facto no temporal authority, while true power would hereditarily pass down through the line of the bearer of the Mandate. In this system, it is easy to see why many lords, including those not of Yaerud blood, would support Djoborin: if he intended to set up his own court and feudal system, which seems assured, there would have been great opportunity for rapid advancement once Djoborin seized the claim of the Mandate and marginalized the sons of Weizong.

In the case of Qutug, there was no such rationale for support. Qutug overtly intended to weaken the power of the royal house by dividing the inheritance (his only thin claim to power), and there were few lords of the realm who wished to see their fiefs divided further among their sons when they could instead be centralized. There were only two lords who supported him, the brothers Moshar and Hedeng, sons of the great general Yaerud Sabon, whose lands had already been divided between them. Partisan histories of the time assert that these Yaerud, who did not descend from Dashi and were not of the royal house, only even supported Qutug in the hopes that the royal line would fall into infighting, and they would have a chance to seize power themselves (for, though they were not descended of Dashi, they were descendants of Taizu, the first Emperor of the Liao).

These simultaneous rebellions left Diluguin with a small core of loyal vassals: Kirnis gada Talava, the loyal lords Shulu Baisha-an and Asalup Daerqa, Purgyal Tsubartsan of Volyn, and the realm of Dorhan II of Turov, ruled by his Purgyal regent.

It was not missed then, as now, that it was the most diverse group of vassals which supported the Emperor, not those most akin to him: indeed, not a single member of the Yaerud were among them. Kirnis was a Lithuanian, and a fresh convert to the realm’s syncretic Tengrism; Shulu Baisha-an was the scion of the sole Khitan lord who had been permitted to enter the Jin Khidan Zhou with honor following Daweizu’s death, son of Shulu Cha II, of one of the Destroyer’s Irkin; Asalup Daerqa was the son of Sugr Daerqa, Daweizu’s regent and loyal Uighur vassal; and Purgyal Tsubartsan and Dorhan II both fought alongside Diluguin due to the grace Weizong had shown them, insisting that, despite the great dishonor of Purgyal Kyi, the Tibetan Purgyal be given their due and landed within the realm. They now repay that trust.

The ambitious betrayal of quite literally every landed Yaerud was the fruit of Weizong’s desire to empower the Yaerud when he organized the structure of the realm alongside Daweizu. While the first and second Emperors believed that empowering the Yaerud would lead to strengthening the realm, the “Kinslayer's Gambit,” as the conflict would come to poetically be called (recalling the old rumors of Djoborin's murder of his brother Ituk of Belz), proved that the ambition of claimants to the throne would forever threaten the Jin Khidan Zhou for so long as the Yaerud continued to be empowered over a core of smaller, weaker vassals with no claim.

Textual evidence suggests that over 75% of the Polish, Lithuanian, and “low Khitan” dynasties to be granted land in the Early Imperial period occurred after the civil war, and for good reason: the conflict seemed to prove that no Yaerud save the ruling house could be trusted in positions of power.

Yet one of the most significant consequences of the betrayal of the Yaerud was the loss of almost all of the realm’s greatest commanders. Although legally any landed (Khitan) lord could train as a soldier and be appointed to lead the armies of the Jin Khidan Zhou, de facto it was an honor which was almost solely reserved for the Yaerud, while other lords trained as administrators and diplomats. Not a single one of the lords who remained loyal to Diluguin was a soldier by training, nor even temperament.

This lack of available commanders, coupled with the devastation of the Imperial hinterland and disorganized state of the royal army, forced Diluguin to turn to his eldest son, Moshan, for support--there was no one else trustworthy, not even a simple sergeant, who could lead a flank.

Moshan was a quiet, bookish boy, and for good reason: as a dwarf, he could never mount a horse, swing a sword, or be taken seriously on the field as a commander. Freshly a man at just sixteen, he did not even have a beard to prevent the men from mistaking him for a child.

Yet again, in the strange serendipity which seemed to ever plague the Liao at need, Moshan was, through the dire need of his father, given the chance he never should have been afforded. Djoborin had rushed his forces forward to invest Sandomierz in the hope of capturing Diluguin’s youngest son Abo and forcing a brokered peace. Diluguin was forced to charge south, and Moshan was given command of his left flank in the Battle of Sandomierz.

The battle was not so one-sided as the histories paint it; it raged for a full month, primarily taking place not as one single battle but as a series of many small engagements, and many times Djoborin’s forces, much better-commanded and with high morale compared to the disease-ridden and disorganized Imperial army, broke their enemies. But in the end the Imperial forces were able to regroup and secure several critical victories, and the day was won for Diluguin. Djoborin’s ragged remnants retreated from Sandomierz, and shy young Moshan earned the respect of men who would not before have followed the pale dwarf to a tavern, much less to war.

After Djoborin’s army was smashed at Sandomierz Diluguin led his men north to his brother Qutug’s seat at Trakai, judging that Qutug’s army now posed the real threat as Djoborin’s forces were reeling and disorganized. But by the time Diluguin arrived at Trakai the immense cost of maintaining the Imperial army (the limited surviving ledgers from the period indicate an outflow of almost 30 ducat-weights of gold per month to arm, equip, feed and pay it) had left the state insolvent, despite the continued tithe from Poland.

With his men grumbling and a mutiny possible, Diluguin declined to pursue his brother’s fleeing army and instead invested Trakai, breaching the walls by assault later that month and seizing Qutug son of Qutug, the Emperor’s nephew.

Although the boy was held as hostage in order to try forcing Qutug to surrender, when this plan failed even then Diluguin declined to ransom him, despite the dire state of his coffers. Diluguin instead held on to his nephew to continue pressing his brother to surrender, while relying on ransoming the other members of the court of Trakai and its vassal towns and baronies, which were all captured as the Imperial army rampaged through the territory in an attempt to fund itself on the back of the region’s wealth. Already depopulated from the plagues, it would be a long while before Trakai would recover.

The Imperial army then proceeded south, where it broke Qutug’s army at Sluck (where they had successfully invested and captured the castle there--the one loss of territory which occurred during the entire rebellion) before returning back north and repeating the rape of Trakai, this time at Izjaslavl, ripping the land apart for its wealth and capturing the rebellious Uldjin, son of Ago.

If any further sign was needed, the defeat of Qutug’s army and the capture of Uldjin marked the point of certitude that Djoborin and Qutug’s rebellions would fail. Both men had a combined 1,500 soldiers remaining to them, while the Imperial army--even devastated by disease, desertion, low morale, infrequent pay and poor commanders as it had been--proved the wisdom of Daweizu and Weizong when they invested so heavily into its creation and training. Quite probably the most elite armed force in the known world, only potentially excepting the great Mongol hordes, the Imperial Liao Army had put down a rising of over half of the realm with ease.

Now was the hour of vultures, where the doom of the defeated approached.

The first to be offered up was Qutug. Despite the capture of his own son and his clear defeat, Qutug refused to surrender. Ashamed that he had proven his father correct (for the only thing he had proven in the course of his rebellion was that Diluguin was the superior of the two of them) he refused to surrender or face his brother, and melted away into the hinterland of Samogitia.

…or would have, at any rate, if the Lithuanians had not all-but-immediately betrayed him to Diluguin. The lowborn Lithuanian alderman of a small town where Qutug was hiding overtook the lord’s meager guard with his own troops and bundled him away, in chains, to Huangjin Zhongxin.

Although the alderman only did this in order to spare his town from the rape experienced at Trakai, a Lithuanian supporting the throne was not overlooked by Diluguin, whose opinion of the minorities within the Jin Khidan Zhou was rapidly improving.

When Qutug’s rebellion collapsed and he was delivered to Diluguin in chains, Djoborin rapidly sought the opportunity to meet with Qutug’s only two supporters, Hedeng and Moshar, and attempt to secure their support. Their lands were just on the other side of the border from the Polish King’s seat at Kalisz, and Djoborin hoped to achieve a great reversal at the meeting: the promise of Hedeng and Moshar’s spears to his cause, as well as the support of King Branimir, who he believed he could buy with a promise to defend his realm with no expectation of tribute. If all had gone well, Djoborin might have been able to raise a second army to fight against Diluguin.

Sadly for Djoborin, all did not go well. As he had throughout his life, Biaen the Beautiful once more reconsidered where his loyalties lie. And at a time most opportune for himself, Biaen decided that he was Diluguin’s man after all, selling out the time and place of the meeting: a sleepy little town called Radomsko.

Hedeng and Moshar were promised leniency by the Huangdi if they cooperated with his capture of Djoborin, and so as Diluguin’s uncle and the lord Siau were escorted into a small manor in Radomsko, they walked directly into a trap.

As the lords sat opposite Hedeng and Moshar, bowmen hidden in a hallway to the side of the meeting-room suddenly loosed their bows, cutting down the few guards Djoborin had been allowed to bring with him. Before Djoborin was even able to get to his feet and draw his blade, Moshar was on top of him with naked steel.

Djoborin and Siau Uldjin were led from the manor in fetters, hands and feet. With their capture, the Kinslayer's Gambit was concluded, and Diluguin was firmly secured upon the throne.

In retrospect, it might seem that the Khitan name for the war was altogether too impressive for a conflict which had concluded in just nine months, with Imperial power secured. Yet it would be wise to remember that the conflict between Djoborin and Diluguin had been brewing for at least thirty years, if not from the day the two children were born; every Khitan suspected that a show of strength would eventually occur between the two of them, and had long prepared for the consequences of that conflict. Although in this context Qutug is an afterthought (a poignant commentary about his entire life), the importance of the anticipated conflict between Djoborin and Diluguin, as well as the lessons which Diluguin learned about trusting landed rulers of his own dynasty as a result of the conflict, mark the war was one of the most critical inflection points in the history of the early Empire.

The dungeons beneath the Imperial palace were damp, smelling of rotted wood and rotting flesh. They had been constructed in a rush, dug haphazardly beneath the foundations of the Imperial Palace as an afterthought while architects rushed to build the much more important edifice above it, the golden seat of Daweizu. Now in particular, with the plague still ravaging the city, the moldy pit beneath the gilded palace was a place quite hazardous to one’s health.

Holding a kerchief to his mouth, Diluguin coughed wetly, spitting blood up into the cloth. He still bore the consequences of the plague himself, and could only imagine the state his brother would be in.

When he saw Qutug, the younger man seemed half-dead already. The cloth which bound his gouged-out eye was drenched in pus from an infection of his eye socket. Lash-marks covered his body, and, with his arms chained to the damp wooden walls of his cell, his beard and chest were covered in a pathetic layer of spittle and blood--he, too, had clearly fell afoul of the plague.

“I don’t need to hear anything from you,” Qutug said as he saw his brother approach, surprisingly firm of voice given his condition. “I do not want to hear your platitudes or your gloating, whichever it is.”

“Perhaps I wish to hear from you,” Diluguin said evenly. “I always stood up to Ago for you, even when he said you were a threat. We were not close, Qutug, but I trusted you. Tell me why you did it.”

“How could you understand?” Qutug laughed, hard enough that he soon began rasping and hacking. “You have had everything! The only one you could compare yourself to is Djoborin, and you proved yourself every bit his match. You’ve never been the lesser son, Dil. You’ve never had your father look you in the eye and tell you that you’re being given the honor of ruling a scrap of land because you’re no threat to the man who’s better than you.”

Qutug’s one eye flashed in the dim light. “I wanted to be a threat.”

Diluguin met his brother’s one good eye for a long while. “I will leave your son in his place,” he said as he turned to leave. “As for you… I will instruct the guards to stop feeding you. You will pass from this cruel life soon. And may you be the prince of your dreams in heaven.”

Diluguin expected to hear some cry from his brother--for mercy, forgiveness, a chance at redemption--as he walked away. All he heard behind him was a long, slow, rasping exhale of breath, as if in ecstasy at the thought that death was coming. It tore Diluguin to the bone. Though he no longer loved his brother, the sorrow and madness of what he had done made it difficult to stop himself from breaking out into tears. Not for the first time, Diluguin thought about the price of permitting other Yaerud to rule their own lands, and wondered if it was wise to leave his nephew Qutug in his place.

One individual whom he would not permit to live sat down the hall from Qutug. In a small, isolated cell Siau Uldjin was chained to a wall, not unlike Qutug. A guard sat within Uldjin’s room, however, standing watch over a long wooden box, which Uldjin was eyeing nervously as Diluguin entered.

“Please, Huangdi, please, I--” he began, but Diluguin ignored him entirely. Freeing the Spear of the Destroyer from its protective covering, he tested the balance as Uldjin began to panic all the harder.

“Please, please!” he whimpered. “He promised me that my son would rule the south! He swore he would set his wife aside and marry a Siau! Please, please, it was wrong, I deserve to die. But not like this, PLEASE, not Daweizu’s own spear!”

Diluguin pointed the blade at Uldjin’s heart, and ignoring his screams, thrust it forward brutally. To die by the spear of the Destroyer marked one an enemy to all Khitan… yet it was not the worst death he would give.

Even in defeat, Djoborin was regarded as dangerous. With many friends and spies among the court and with expert training in combat, to leave him within the palace grounds would have been asking for trouble. Instead, he was housed in a small hovel outside the bounds of Huangjin Zhongxin, on the edge of one of the royal forests where the Emperors hunted, there guarded by an entire detachment of the Emperor’s soldiers (who had been paid handsomely to ensure their loyalty). With his location undisclosed, any attempt to rescue Djoborin had been abortive, if it had ever been plotted at all.

Diluguin rode up to the small hovel with only one other man in tow: his son Moshan, mounted on a small pony fit with a special saddle to keep Moshan aright. As Diluguin helped his small child dismount, the Emperor extracted a promise from him.

“Whatever I do, whatever I say, whatever I claim, you are to confirm it. Do not discount, disbelieve or gainsay anything, do you understand?” Diluguin said sternly.

“Yes, father,” Moshan croaked in his throaty voice, sounding for the world neither fully man nor fully child.

And so they entered, the full-bodied Emperor followed by the small, pale, waddling form of his dwarven firstborn behind him.

There in the corner of the room sat Djoborin, covered fittingly in his own feces; it appeared the guards had not trusted him sufficiently to unchain him, and he had been forced to dirty himself in his own filth. But even covered in sh*t and piss, Djoborin’s eyes flashed with a dangerous hate at the appearance of Diluguin.

“I must apologize for the filth,” he said, never taking his eyes off of Diluguin. “Your men would not untie me, and the body does as it wills. Perhaps you thought it would shame me?”

“I didn’t give the order,” Diluguin replied, “but it suits you.”

Djoborin smiled a heartless smile. “I’m sure you think so. Did you bring that deformed creature to see what a proper Khitan looks like?” he asked, nodding toward Moshan.

“A real Khitan wouldn’t be covered in his own feces,” Moshan replied instantly, before his father could even interrupt. “A real Khitan would have died before being captured.”

“Keep your tongue behind your teeth, misshapen monster,” Djoborin replied lazily, never taking his eyes off of Diluguin. “I suspect your small stature leaves you with too little space to think, or you would never have said something so foolish. Or do you wish us all to be dead, yourself included, and Dashi’s bones windswept and unburied in the Middle Kingdom?”

Moshan flushed, and, seeing it from the corner of his eye, Djoborin’s smile deepened. “Such a lovely child you have, nephew,” he said. “I do hope you can train him for the menagerie yet. He seems slightly too stupid to play a monkey at present.”

Yet if Djoborin’s words cut him, Diluguin showed no sign. He rubbed at his long black beard and shrugged. “To call the court a menagerie seems fitting, but Moshan is bright enough. I would not worry about him being the monkey, though I can’t say the same for Tabuyen.”

Djoborin likewise ignored Diluguin’s barb, but took the bait he had wanted him to. “The court?” he laughed incredulously. “You intend to show this pale, deformed thing off to the court?”

“I do not intend to, but already have,” the Emperor said, sitting easily in a wooden chair on the other side of the hovel. “I have introduced him as my heir,” he continued, helping Moshan into a position to sit, “and heard the pledges of support from my lords. MY Lords, Djoborin.”

Djoborin laughed so deeply and so long that Diluguin wondered if he would ever stop, but eventually, after he had wrung all the barbs he could from his mockery, he did. Yet the chained man now seemed uncertain, for neither Diluguin or Moshan had shown any sign of annoyance at his laughter.

“The lords of the realm would never support a creature so deformed,” Djoborin said, almost defensively. “The Siau, not to mention Qutug…”

“No longer exist,” Diluguin cut in smoothly.

Djoborin’s eyes darted to Moshan’s, seeking for any sign that Diluguin was lying, but found nothing there but boredom. Djoborin’s eyes widened slightly.

“I exterminated them for being traitors,” Diluguin continued evenly. “The Siau have been traitors all the way back to Tabuyen, and have been eradicated in their entirety for their crimes. It pained me to do so, but I put Ago’s son Uldjin to death also, which as you know places Podlyashe in a seven-year regency.

“Qutug and his son I both had captured and they just so happened to die of the plague,” he lied flippantly, “and I gave their lands over to Moshan,” he gestured vaguely to his left. “Biaen--he was the one who sold out your meeting in Radomsko--was always a loyalist to me, and the rest of the realm is fully behind me after the remainder of the claimants are gone. They know the price for denying me now, so they all supported Moshan as soon as I chose him as my heir. Here sits the future Emperor!”

Moshan, deformed little Moshan, heir to the throne for all Djoborin knew, waved a chubby hand to the physical prodigy that was his grand-uncle, the man who had been denied a throne despite his inherent talents. And the latter retched.

“So all that’s left is you! Well, and your son,” Diluguin said cheerfully. Moshan’s face had been a mask of utter boredom the entire time, and by the time Diluguin stood, Djoborin’s eyes were bugging out of his skull.

“Soldier!” the Emperor called, and a guard rushed into the room. At a gesture, Djoborin’s bonds were cut, and the man was shakily helped to his feet.

“I didn’t have the chance to with the Siau,” Diluguin explained sorrowfully, “so I’m going to practice with you instead. You’re free to go; run as far as you can! If you escape, I’ll let you live. I’ll even let your son live!”

Djoborin stared at his nephew in shock, terror, and hate. And he ran.

And Diluguin rode him down with the Spear of the Destroyer not a minute later.

As Diluguin rode back to the hovel, already cleaning Djoborin’s blood from the blade of Daweizu’s spear, Moshan waddled out to meet him.

“Did you mean what you said about killing Tabuyen?” Moshan asked.

“No,” Diluguin replied absently. “All but the entirety of it was a lie, in one form or another. Djoborin spent his entire life getting inside my head. For once, I wanted to get inside his.”

The Emperor jumped down from the saddle of his war-horse and knelt down next to his son. “I will tell you one thing, though, boy,” he said softly, embracing Moshan. “You impressed me today. Your grandfather said it would never happen--and it hasn’t happened yet!--but let’s not call it a lie: I will introduce you to the court.”

And so, though Tabuyen retained control of Galich and the passes of Peremyshyl, his house became known as the Children Prophesy Denied: of the two babes who could have been prophesied to lead the Khitan, it was never his destiny, nor his heirs'. The child of prophesy was Diluguin, and upon taking the throne he chose for his era name Hongwu, meaning “abundantly martial.” He had proven himself domestically, and now with his rule secured, he longed to finally face and defeat the Mongol threat.

Chapter 15: The Hongwu Emperor, Pt. II - Crisis on the Smolnya

Chapter Text

Of course, the Hongwu Emperor was not so foolish as to believe that his throne being secure meant that his realm was, nor that rule would be secure for his own son. The underlying conditions which had allowed for the Kinslayer's Gambit still existed within the realm, and despite coming to the throne over a year before, the Emperor still had not met with his vassals off of the back of a horse. Perhaps most dangerously, even now plague still rampaged through Huangjin Zhongxin, and the Emperor was still obviously suffering from the effects of the disease.

The formal coronation of Diluguin was the Emperor’s first chance to accept the pledges of loyalty from his remaining vassals, to announce his Era Name, to confirm his form of address as the Agdji Huangdi, and to force the kowtow--as with his father, Diluguin opted for an eastern iteration of the ceremony, unlike Daweizu's western-inspired coronation. Yet the coronal ceremony was also the time to issue the edicts he intended regarding the succession, and his choice of Moshan as his heir. Due to the unhealthy conditions in the capital, Diluguin decided to host the ceremony at Galich: he had, after all, not yet buried Ago formally, nor had he taken the route of spears which he must in order to truly accept the mantle of the Huangdi.

Thus, as he received the crown of his father from the hands of priest Qan-in of the Mausoleum and arose as Agdji Huangdi Diluguin, the Hongwu Emperor, he, with his vassals behind him, walked in solemn file to pay respects to the departed Ago.

The dusky interior of the Mausoleum was quiet, as it always was, but this time it was almost eerily so. No Emperor had died--Ago was Lord Regent--and so none were permitted to pass through the great rows of spears; all of the many vassals of the realm huddled around the entrance to the Mausoleum as Diluguin alone travelled around the length of the great pavilion to the stone sarcophagi at the west end.

Beneath the sarcophagus which would be his own--an uncomfortable thought, and Diluguin strove not to look at its inviting emptiness--a small, lower stone slab rested, a quarter of the height of his own huge, raised sarcophagus. Within it, he knew, lay Ago: buried in honor, albeit not with a Temple Name or a transit of spears, in recognition of his loyal service as regent.

Diluguin knelt before his uncle and said prayers for his wellbeing; he told him of the survival of his son Uldjin, and thanked him once more for his loyalty. And then he turned to leave.

The fourth row of spears was his own, and though no vassal might pass it today, he had to in order to be proclaimed Huangdi in full; an Emperor’s reign begins with the transit of spears, and it ends with it. Yet the fourth row was different than the others: alone of every other row, which stood perfectly straight and even, the spear at its head was bent at an almost impassible angle, the tip of the spear dyed red as with rust. Yet Diluguin knew it was the blood of Djoborin, whom Ago had thrust into it in fury after Djoborin had dishonored the name of Daweizu. Although Ago had never passed the spears as an Emperor himself, he had made a clear mark on Diluguin’s own passage.

He smiled as he knelt beneath it and, alone, transited the spears. He was now Huangdi in truth.

Sitting in a plain wooden chair on the steps of the small temple of the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand with the great lords laid out before him, Diluguin announced his sweeping changes to the succession.

“There will no longer be a single elective moot on the death of an Emperor,” the Huangdi began. “This process encouraged violence; those overlooked at a moot knew they might never live to present their case again, save at the point of a spear. Instead, every five years we will now gather here to debate anew. This will prevent rebelliousness, and likewise prevent the chosen successor to the throne from becoming complacent.

“Yet due to the rebellion and the instability of the realm, this first moot of my reign I abolish. Many of you assembled here have not earned my trust, or the right to choose my successor. I name my firstborn, Moshan, as successor in the interim. The first full selection moot will occur five years from today.”

There were many whispers about this, but none spoke up to dispute the choice--Diluguin was a young and vital ruler, and surely would survive for five more years; they would have time to select someone other than the pale dwarf. With no complaints materializing, the Emperor continued.

“Finally, on the matter of the Mandate and the Imperial title. These concepts are separate, as my honored predecessor Ago proved. Yet here and now I make a binding decree: never shall they be separated unless one of Ago’s own blood is elected. The Mandate and the Empire come together as one whenever a successor is crowned, save in the case of the Good Regents, who alone I permit to rule as Lord Stewards on the behalf of my successors.”

Despite the sweeping nature of these changes, they were accepted. Half of the vassals of Diluguin were loyal, and the other half had been so soundly beaten they had no power to resist him.

Although the lords of the realm, including the royal house, had never put any stock in the concept of the Child of Prophesy (they saw it as a foolish tale of the peasants) one thing was certain: Diluguin was powerful enough to force these decrees without any resistance.

After the Great Lords accepted the changes to the succession and pledged their fealty to Diluguin as the new Huangdi, the various lords made ready to return to their own fiefs. The Emperor too, as well as Moshan, set out for Huangjin Zhongxin, with hopes in their hearts that the plague might have subsided in their brief absence (sadly, that was not to be).

Yet before they could leave, Diluguin was waylaid by the party of Yaerud Uldjin, Ago’s son. No weapons were drawn, but Diluguin’s small force met Uldjin’s entire party upon the road--they were outnumbered three-to-one, and as a dwarf Moshan could not fight.

Yet Uldjin rode up to them alone and bowed from his saddle.

“I saw you bow your head before the tomb of my father and pray, cousin,” Uldjin said. “I did not even know my father was given the honor of a burial in the Mausoleum.”

“You did not delay rebelling long enough to learn my intent,” Diluguin replied curtly. “I recall the banners of Podlyashe were raised against me before you even heard my decree regarding the Lord Regents.”

Uldjin nodded. “Regrettably, regrettably. I should have learned more of patience from my father. I always saw you as the enemy, cousin--you stole his honor from him, I thought, and his attention from his true sons. Both might be true, but there was honor also in his service, and you rewarded him for his loyalty. I did not think you would.”

Diluguin did not know how to reply to this, and could only stare blankly at his cousin. Uldjin squirmed in his saddle, and finally bowed low to the waist.

“You have no reason to trust me or my word,” he said, “but I regret my haste, and my dishonor. I am your man until death.”

“Trust is easy to give,” Diluguin replied smoothly, “but easy also to lose. I will trust you, Uldjin. But if you ever give me reason to regret that trust, its loss will be complete. And the consequences will go beyond your own body. Do you understand?”

“I do,” he said, still bent double.

Not forgotten during the events of the past months was Moshan, who had proven himself both in the war and in the subsequent peace. Although the remaining vassals of the realm still found it impossible to believe that a bookish, deformed dwarf could somehow inspire loyalty in anyone, those who knew Moshan more closely were often greatly impressed by him. Although it was true that he could not mount anything larger than a pony, somehow he had still proven unexpectedly adept at military strategy during his service alongside his father in the Kinslayer's Gambit, and had even earned the loyalty of the Imperial Army. Although perhaps not as well-learned as he could be in his studies, he was nevertheless extremely erudite and blisteringly quick of mind, just as Diluguin himself was. Although Diluguin had younger sons who might one day prove to be better-suited to the throne, at the moment there was simply no better choice than Moshan.

Although it was not a formal endorsem*nt, Diluguin had brought Moshan along with him to the Mausoleum in order to introduce him to the lords of the realm, and while he failed to impress them--how could anyone who could not swing a sword or mount a horse rule?--Diluguin's decree abolishing the first succession moot forced the issue of Moshan as his heir, and his vassals did not rebel against his declaration. While a far cry from a formal endorsem*nt, it gave Moshan the precedent of having been--at least at one point in his life--the unambiguous heir to the Jin Khidan Zhou.

Despite Diluguin’s own immense military skill and the still-present threat of the Mongols to the east, the selection of a bookish dwarf as successor to Agdji's seat is quite likely the best indication there could ever be for the shifting philosophies of rule and war in the Golden Khitan State.

Finally, in June of the following year, death had claimed sufficient due.

Huangjin Zhongxin and its hinterland had grown explosively since the arrival of the Khitans, with Emperors investing almost exclusively into the development of the capital (excluding the costs of building the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand in Galich). In the thirty-five years between the arrival of Daweizu on the coasts of the Baltic and the outbreak of the Great Plague in 1244, cities, castles, temples and manors had been built, filled to capacity, and expanded dozens of times, as Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, Khitans, Qipcaqs, Turkmen, and even Wends and Magyars had made their way to this bustling economic and intellectual center. Although exact data does not exist, what little is known about the wealth of the capital before the plague suggests that its income was beginning to rival established trade centers such as Sjaelland. And all this had been accomplished by a state which had been nomadic not two generations before!

But the plague was the price of Khitan hubris. They had been a nomadic culture for far too long, and they paid too little heed to overcrowding and squalor within their towns. When the simultaneous plagues started, the conditions in the capital were perfect to viciously accelerate its spread, and all but overnight the overcrowded population of the Khitan capital was wiped out. Between those fleeing the diseases, the dead, and those lost in the Kinslayer's Gambit, demographic estimates suggest that fully half of the population of Huangjin Zhongxin and the surrounding countryside were lost, and as much as 20% of the population of the Jin Khidan Zhou as a whole.

Although construction in the capital would never cease, in Diluguin’s reign it was sharply curtailed--what use was there in building new structures, when half of the city lay empty?

Early in his reign, Diluguin stood in opposition to kin-marriage. Although he could never prove it (as his father had always effectively isolated him from Daweizu) and did not ever speak of his reservations, he had gradually begun to suspect that the kinship clause as preached by his father was not what his grandfather had intended. Indeed, Diluguin’s support of Moshan as his successor despite his pale skin and deformity suggest that he favored strength of the mind over blood. So why did Diluguin marry his own dark-skinned daughter, the child of a Khitan woman whom Weizong had forced him to marry?

Some accounts suggest that Telgen’s quick wit charmed the Emperor, and without any social taboo against incest to dissuade him, he chose to put aside his qualms. Others suggest that Telgen’s great facility with intrigue encouraged him to bind her to him rather than leave her to her own devices, where she could move against Moshan. One thing, however, is certain: although the chronicles tell us that Telgen and Diluguin were friendly with one another and Telgen performed her duties as a woman faithfully, there was no true love between them as there had been between Weizong and his daughter-wife Cheu’en. So why?

This question becomes all the more pressing when one considers that Diluguin’s age was almost a perfect timer to Christendom’s reckoning with the Khitans. The Conclave of Galich set a date of 50 years from the date of the Conclave--the year of Diluguin’s birth--for the eradication of concubinage among the Khitan. Although thus far the court had been able to hide its incestuous marriages by introducing daughters, sisters and mothers as various unrelated concubines from the east, when Diluguin turned 50, concubinage must end, and this method of hiding the court’s practices would no longer be possible.

One hint about Diluguin’s probable rationale lies in the marriage that he arranged for Moshan: Yaerud Siaugu, the daughter of Yaerud Ituk, son of Daweizu and Lord of Belz, and his sister Suiregen, Daweizu’s youngest daughter. Although this was a very political match (her parentage ensured she was a granddaughter of Daweizu on both sides, and as Ituk’s eldest daughter she had a legal claim on the Belz territory, which at that time was ruled by Djoborin), there also appears to have been a practical element to it: Siaugu was bronze of skin.

Although Diluguin appears to have not cared about his father’s preoccupation with the “features of the east,” it seems as if he WAS preoccupied with a fear that his vassals might care. Diluguin wished for Moshan to succeed him, and if not Moshan then one of his other sons by the "wife of his choice," the Lithuanian Milda, but he was terrified that their pale skin would prevent the Khitan from acknowledging them in the succession following Weizong’s injunction against losing their uniqueness. Perhaps he was also worried about losing face if he did not marry one of his own kin, as the court tended to view a “marriage in accordance with the Prophet of Tengri’s wishes” as a holy affair that much strengthened one’s legitimacy. Having spent almost his entire adult life avoiding the practice, in the end Diluguin might have been terrified to be pulled from the throne by something which he perceived as so minor after proving victorious in the Kinslayer's Gambit.

Soon after marrying his daughter, he laid with her and produced a son, whom he named Aerlu’or. Blessedly the child carried the features of the east strongly, and it is reported that after his birth Diluguin never again sought out her bedchambers.

Though whether this is because he truly no longer wished to engage in a relationship with her or simply as a function of circ*mstances tumbling out of his control will always remain a matter of debate. On the 10th of September 1248, armies of the Golden Horde under Jochi ford the Smolnya, raiding the farmsteads of Turov. The long-awaited war with the Mongols has come, and from that moment forth Diluguin rarely had a moment free of some great concern.

The few contemporary accounts we have originating from the earliest Mongol raids paint a picture of terror. The Kinslayer's Gambit had only concluded less than three full years earlier, and the results had left the Galich and Trakai bled of their manpower and of skilled commanders who might have served the Empire during this existential conflict. Worse still, the same great plague which had claimed the life of Ago and so many others of the Yaerud only finished its bloody march the year prior, and the elite armies of Huangjin Zhongxin, the Emperor’s personal force, suffered both from the extreme depopulation of the heartland and their losses during the Gambit, losses which it was nigh-impossible to replenish in the aftermath of the plagues.

While the peasantry seemed to believe in the concept of the Child of Prophesy and held faith that Diluguin would prove victorious, the same cannot be said for the nobility. Those who had marriage ties with European nobility sent dozens of letters during this period attempting to lay plans for their flight from the Jin Khidan Zhou should the Mongols prove victorious, absconding with what men and wealth they could and variously crossing the Carpathians or trekking through Poland into the Christian heartlands--places they hoped would be safe from the victorious Mongol advance.

Although Jochi was not an impressive figure by Khitan standards, the nobility’s concern was founded. He had almost 30,000 horsem*n at his beck, not even including the forces of his sworn Khans. Although a shadow of Temujin, it was not clear that Jochi needed to be his father born again in order to succeed against the Khitan. The spears at the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand stood as quiet testament to the fact that Agdji Huangdi had only ever needed a third of Jochi’s numbers to break any foe before him. With thirty-thousand, even if Diluguin proved a martial mastermind the likes of his grandfather, would settled, inflexible armies be capable of facing down the amazing power and maneuverability of the Mongol horse?

Most of Diluguin’s vassals did not seem to think so. There was a pervasive line of thought among the Khitan elite, unchallenged since the formation of the Jin Khidan Zhou, that a mounted warrior was always superior to an unmounted one. The Khitan had only been a sedentary people for one generation, after all; over three-fourths of the Khitan households in the realm (not just the nobility) still had a yearly day of remembrance on the day of the Parting of the Spears--not for the loss of their warlike nature, but for the loss of their horses, given over to plowing and furrowing. Horses were still the ultimate expression of freedom, wealth and power among the Khitan, and the nature of the Imperial Army, of which mounted troops comprised only barely over one-fifth of the entire force, inspired no confidence when facing down nomadic forces. The Imperial Army was good enough for putting down a revolt or killing barbarians like the Poles, but against an honorable army on horseback, what chance did it stand?

Despite the atmosphere of tension, Diluguin moved decisively to rally his forces. Yet all the news was ill: the Imperial Army had not recovered from the plague or the Kinslayer's Gambit, boasting only 8,000 of its theoretical 12,000 men; there were no men to spare from Trakai or Galich at all, as the nobility had feared; the forces of Kirnis gada Talava numbered less than a hundred souls, all unarmored Lietuvai woodsmen; and worse yet, despite being organized by Daweizu to serve Khitan interests, the forces of the Lords of the Sky, the mercenary band founded to protect the roads of the Jin Khidan Zhou from Romuva and Christian brigands during its earliest settlement, refused to fight the Mongols, whom they claimed were not heretics. In a blind fury Diluguin expelled them from the realm, and it’s rumored that many of them offered their spears to Jochi instead, eager to plunder the same lands they had so recently protected. It is known for certain that one did, a name remembered by the Khitan for a very long time.

Yet the worst news of all was the betrayal by the Poles. For at the time of the Khitans’ direst need, when Diluguin sent word that he invoked the terms of Ago’s treaty with the Gryfita Kings and required that Poland should fulfill its obligation to help shield Europe against the Mongols, the craven Branimir II shut the gates of Kalisz and reneged on his oath, declaring his total independence. His sudden hostility guaranteed that no aid would come from Europe.

“The bitterest cup that could have been brewed,” Diluguin remarked to Moshan that evening. “But our family history tells us moments like these are opportunities. When Dashi defended Holy Emil at two-to-one odds, or when Daweizu charged at Kashgar, and gambled the future of the Liao on a single battle--these moments make legends.”

“You mean to use this as a political opportunity,” Moshan astutely noted.

His father smiled. “It’s poor luck to put the wagon before the horse,” he replied. “Survival first.”

At the end of January, a sufficient force of Mongol cavalry had been gathered for Jochi Khan to order them back across the Smolnya, which the Khitans were as-yet still too disorganized to hold against their crossing. On the 20th of January Turov was invested, and by the 28th the fortifications of Sen Dorhan II had fallen and the young child had been spirited back away across the plains, to be held captive by Jochi. Although Dorhan was both the son and grandson of a traitor (and thereby not deeply missed in Huangjin Zhongxin), his capture was still demoralizing to the Khitan forces which were gathering to the east in Pinsk--they could have intervened, yet were held back by Diluguin from giving battle.

Part of this was prudence: Diluguin did not wish to strike until he had all of his forces gathered to him, for unlike his grandsire he did not trust to fate alone to deliver him--the Huangdi, too, was a victim of the mental trap of the Khitan nobility, for whom the horse would ever outshine the footman. Yet part of it also came down to scouting, and knowing one’s enemy.

The Mongols had long held the fords of the Smolnya, but had never crossed them, fearing reprisal from Ago for as long as he lived. When Ago died and his heir was a man unknown to the Mongols, and word of the Kinslayer's Gambit arrived swiftly on the heels of his ascension, Jochi seized the opportunity as soon as his forces could be organized--too quickly, Diluguin suspected. Not even traders had forded the Smolnya, for the Ban of Agdji was absolute: the Mongols could not know the terrain they would encounter save through the use of local guides, and who would betray the Khitan?

The answer was one Diluguin expected: one who had, in his own eyes, owed no loyalty to the state. Tuoba Hedeng, a descendent of one of the bandit-governors set up by Suni Chugung after the breaking of the first Empire, was given command of the Mongol host.

Hedeng never held loyalty to Huangjin Zhongxin, and had only been permitted into the Jin Khidan Zhou due to his service among the Lords of the Sky. When this band was exiled from the Empire for their disloyalty, Hedeng swore his spear to Mongol service instead. Disloyal to both the Suni and the Yaerud, he took up service with the arch-enemies of the Khitan people in return for a promise of land to call his own.

This knowledge was what Diluguin needed in order to proceed. Diluguin suspected that Jochi would behave cautiously, utilizing myriad scouts and superior numbers to ensure victory. But Diluguin’s scouts revealed that Hedeng cut the figure of a camp tyrant: competent, but overbearing and pompous. That could be used against him.

“What are you planning?” Moshan croaked in his froglike voice, at once pitched lower than one expected for his size, yet so much higher than one expected in his age. His small body was propped in a miniature seat set out for him in his father’s command tent, his ruddy beard extending down almost to his waist. Diluguin thought it looked ridiculous on him, but he understood his son’s desire to stop being mistaken for a child.

“Hedeng,” Diluguin replied slowly as he carefully wrote on the parchment before him, “is known to have a high opinion of his station. I hope he will think too greatly of himself, for I think only by baiting him into fighting us in terrain that is to our favor do we stand a chance. If we were to strike into Turov we would be forced to ford the Pripyat, and attack into an entrenched position where Hedeng holds fortifications. Conversely, if we can force him to attack us here…”

Diluguin trailed off expectantly. He often did this with Moshan, ensuring that the boy listened to him and thought things through thoroughly on his own. Though he was sure Moshan tired of it now, a man grown as he was, it had been his habit with him from his youngest years.

“…the Pinsk marshes will favor us,” the son finished for his father, “especially against cavalry. But this rebel is not a child. How do you think to trick him into fighting in lands he knows are against his favor?”

Diluguin lazily blotted the parchment dry with sand. “Read this,” he smirked.

“From the Master of all Khitan to the Rebel Hedeng:

“Hear now Our reaffirmation that the Liao Dynasty and its chief house, the sons of Dashi Huangdi of the Yaerud, hold right of life and death over all Khitan, to dispense with wholly at Our will. All Khitan life exists only by Our leave, for We alone saved it, and have given it succor and might through Our deeds, and the deeds of no others.

“Your own rebellious house was duly punished for its betrayal through murder and death at the hands of the inferior Mongols. Even as they raped your women, slaughtered your people, and toppled your petty ‘Empires’--fates much-deserved for your cowardice--We enslaved thousands of those who dared enter the borders of the Jin Khidan Zhou. They are the eunuch-slaves and pleasure-women of Poles and Lithuanians now, for the dishonor of a Khitan using one such as you would be too great.

“After your great realms were destroyed by the Mongols, We deigned to permit your petty hosts to continue to exist. The sport when Mongols returned to pillage your lands was amusing, and brought us ever more dishonored Khitans in flight, fresh slaves for Our lowest peasants. Yet now We see that We have been over-generous. We have ordered the Roman Empire to sack the Kirim, and even now it burns; your people are dead or in flight, and soon so too shall all of your kin be, for We have ordered that all enslaved Khitan should be slaughtered throughout the realm. We have demanded that they be told Tuoba Hedeng, traitor to Daweizu, All-Ruler of the Khitan, Huangdi of the Liao and ruler of the Middle Kingdom, is responsible for their deaths.

“Soon you also will die, for when We command the death of a Khitan, so it must be: for to the Khitan are We not as God upon Earth, to whom the right of judgement in all things is given?”

Although the zealous Moshan begged his father to leave out the blasphemy of the final paragraph, Diluguin refused--he believed it would be critical to ensuring that Hedeng would strike. And, surely enough, although the entire missive enraged the man, it was indeed Diluguin’s claim to be the avatar of God on earth which drove him mad. Hedeng, like most Khitan of the east who had refused Agdji’s call, did not adhere to the syncretic Tengrism of their one-time Emperor and his House, instead preferring the old ways. For Diluguin to claim the power of Tengri, especially such a bastardized vision of him, was too much for the already-insulted Hedeng to stomach. Against the wishes of his sub-commanders, Hedeng ordered his men to charge.

With Jochi’s relief force too far away to support Hedeng, Diluguin had achieved the perfect setup. But his forces were still demoralized. Though they had the Child of Prophesy at their head and good terrain for footmen beneath their feet, they still saw the cavalry force of Hedeng as more impressive, and did not view Diluguin as a proven Emperor.

As morning dawned on the second of March, with frost still thick on the marshy ground and the Mongol cavalry advancing slowly before them, Diluguin steadied his men as best he could.

“I am not Daweizu,” he called out, company commanders repeating his words for those too far away to hear, “but though I am not him, I can swear this: we will prove victorious. Remember who you are: you are Khitan! The only true Khitan, the loyal few who stayed with their Emperors through pain, agony and dispossession through to the grace and wealth of the Jin Khidan Zhou. To you we have promised the world, and we will deliver it!

“The world lies east,” Diluguin cried, raising the Spear of the Destroyer into the gleam of the rising sun, “and only inhuman animals bar your path to it. Break them, and claim it!”

The Khitan were encouraged by Diluguin’s words, and charged forward exuberantly. Hedeng attempted a charge of his own in order to rout them, but the marshy terrain of Pinsk caused several of his horse to lose their footing, breaking legs and sending riders careening from their backs. The charge grew disorganized and tapered off, wheeling to return more slowly to Hedeng’s lines. A few of the retreating riders were picked off with arrows, but most escaped, and Hedeng quit the field. He had lost some 400 men, and Diluguin about 50. Hardly the decisive and inspiring victory which Diluguin's speech had alluded to.

Yet Diluguin had anticipated this, to an extent. The Mongol armies were designed for charging, flanking, and Cantabrian circles, just as the Khitan cavalry had been during the nomadic period. Diluguin had studied Khitan cavalry tactics from Daweizu’s day extensively, especially records of points at which his grandfather could not rely entirely on cavalry, such as during his campaign in Tibet. He knew what the Mongols expected, and the limited things they looked to try in the event they did not face ideal conditions--and he set about denying both to them.

The ‘battles’ in Pinsk were never glorious, never glamorous. They were led overwhelmingly by the Lietuvai woodsmen, whose presence was an unexpected boon. Sneaking close to the Mongol camps at night with their woodscraft, they would steal horses and cut the throats of riders; Diluguin’s men would kill a few Mongols here and there with bows before melting into the deep swamps where Hedeng’s horse could not follow; and, rarely, a party of foot would engage when they absolutely must, such as when Hedeng attempted to outflank Diluguin’s supply-lines. But, without battle ever really being given, by that time Diluguin had already bled Hedeng of half his force. Within two weeks, the disgraced Khitan was forced to retreat.

When Jochi finally arrived in Pskov only to learn that Hedeng had charged into the marshes to the west without his leave, he was furious. He swore that he would wring the man’s neck himself even as his cavalry charged to support his assault.

Yet when Jochi’s force came upon the retreating army of his lieutenant, half-starved, pale and lacking half its men, the Khan found himself unmanned. He had feared Agdji the Destroyer, as all Mongols did, openly or otherwise; he had viewed Agdji’s children with caution, wondering whether they had inherited the skills of their father. He was dismissive of the “latter Khitan,” as almost all of his brethren were. Those who grew up on a horse’s back were dangerous, but what threat could a pampered child of a village ever pose? Now old and feeble, Jochi had anticipated the defeat of the Khitan Huangdi as the crowning achievement of a long and prestigious life, a feat which he could point to in order to legitimize his seizure of the title of Khan of Khans, which he had stolen dishonorably from his youngest brother, Temujin-son-of-Temujin.

He could never have guessed that in Diluguin was restored some part of the Destroyer’s prowess, a roaring bonfire beside Agdji’s towering inferno--smaller, perhaps, yet with even greater control.

“Their men will become our kindling; their women our slaves; their babes, targets for our arrows. Their mongrel grasslands will become our hunting preserves, their palaces of dirt our places of defecation. Their great accomplishments will be burned to dust before the might of the Da Liao, who will never forget the affront that existing in the same world as the Mongol animals has forced upon their noble lives. At the point of Khitan spears, their end will come--slowly and arduously, as they themselves have made us suffer.”

So ran the ‘Proclamation of the Destruction of the Mongol People and House of Borjigin,’ the most famous document of Daweizu’s reign, issued after Temujin I defaced the monument to Dashi at Holy Emil. Thus far, it had had no effect; no Khitan of the Jin Khidan Zhou had ever met a Mongol on the field of battle, much less one of Temujin’s own sons. But now Jochi Borjigin sat in Turov, at the head of an army made up almost entirely of Mongols, just as Diluguin’s army was made up almost entirely of Khitans--indeed, one of the last times that an army of the Jin Khidan Zhou was so monocultural.

Although the Mongols may once have scoffed at the document, they did not now. Despite the river crossing, with his army now blooded and with numerical superiority, Diluguin took to the offensive. Whenever a Mongol scouting party came close to Khitan out-riders, the Khitan scouts would shoot a copy of the missive attached to a blackened arrow at their counterparts--a reminder that the promise of eradication had not been forgotten. And though none of the illiterate riders of the Mongols could read it, Jochi could.

And, in terror, the old Khan fled.

It was never determined exactly when Jochi ran. The old Khan had grown more and more ashen-faced as the days passed and more of the “black missives” arrived at his tent, and upon returning to Turov, Diluguin’s army only a few days’ bare march behind, the Khan’s tent was set up but Jochi refused any audience.

The night before the battle it was no longer possible to hide his flight, and his commanders finally acknowledged to the men that the old Khan had taken command of Hedeng’s force, forded the Smolnya, and marched away north. This decision raised many questions, none of the answers to which were apparent at the time.

Whatever Jochi was thinking, the decision to leave--and worse still, to leave none in charge in his absence--was damning. The Khitan forces behind Diluguin were in high spirits following their Emperor’s victory, and the Mongol forces, already in doubt following Hedeng’s failure, were terrified by the black arrows and already poised for a rout without any strong leadership. When Diluguin learned that the Khan appeared to be absent from his camps, he set a tenth of his force to scouting against a surprise attack--but he committed the remaining nine-tenths to battle.

Although the battle replicated the feats of Daweizu in its lopsidedness, it was not even particularly impressive in retrospect. The Mongols, bereft of their scout in Hedeng, simply did not know that the Pripyat could be easily forded in two places nigh to their encampment. Moshan undertook a feint attack at the ford they were aware of, tying up their forces, while Diluguin brought his cavalry around the Mongol rear from the other. As Moshan’s forces rushed the Mongols across the ford Diluguin executed a textbook hammer-and-anvil strike, pinning the Mongol horse between the Khitan cavalry, Moshan’s infantry, and the river. It was not even a contest.

A week after the glorious victory at Turov, Jochi’s force reappeared on the far side of the Smolnya. It became apparent that the old Khan had ridden east temporarily to rally the forces of his Aqas, who stunningly had not initially been called upon to participate in the campaign. Jochi left behind his force in what he believed was a strong defensive position in the expectation that they would hold against the Khitan charge while he gathered reinforcements, and that he may well have been spared of the need to face Diluguin at all if his commanders could prove victorious without him--Jochi, just like the Khitan nobility, suffered the illusion that cavalry was always superior to infantry (at least in suitable terrain, which Turov was).

When he arrived in Gomel, to the east of Turov across the river, it is said that the river still ran red from the over ten-thousand Mongols who had died at the ford the week prior. Although it may be poetic license, it is also said that a single Khitan bowman stood on the far side of the river, and fired but one shot at the Khan, one which landed at his feet: a blackened arrow, carrying the promise of death.

Whatever truths might be spoken about Jochi’s cowardice in fleeing from Turov, whatever his reasoning, it must be admitted that when it came down to the fate of his realm, the old man stood fast and prepared to give honorable battle. With 20,000 of his mean dead already, and boasting but half of the Khitans’ numbers, Jochi stood firm in Gomel and dared Diluguin to come to him.

At the beginning of the war, such bravery might have unnerved Diluguin. But his own confidence was waxing, while Jochi’s had waned almost to nonexistence. Yet to his surprise, when the Huangdi argued that they should use their numbers and high morale to force the ford, Moshan disagreed.

“We should press our advantage and strike now, before the mongrel can gather reinforcements,” Diluguin argued. “If we don’t, we risk all the momentum we have gained in this campaign.”

“I don’t disagree,” Moshan croaked, his unblinking eyes fixed on his father. “But forcing the ford is wasteful. And if we do force it, what then? We’re on the far side of the river, exhausted, in plains that favor their cavalry. The ford could even be dammed against our horse’s crossing by the bodies of the slain, if the Mongols contest it with their full force. We would win, but it might be at pyrrhic cost.”

“And what do you suggest? Finding another ford? If only Tengri were so kind! Unless you have a mind to search the entire riverbed?” Diluguin snorted, gesturing broadly to the north.

“The thought crossed my mind,” Moshan replied in his calm manner. “But I think it unnecessary. I did not say not to use the ford--I said not to FORCE the ford. We have better terrain beneath our own feet. I think we should make use of it.”

The ploy relied on the desperation of the Mongols. Their chances were so poor that Moshan predicted they would take any opportunity, no matter how risky.

Early in the afternoon on the 30th, the entire Khitan cavalry force gathered together and charged the ford of the Smolnya. The Mongols were ready for them, and loosed a half-dozen arrow volleys; the Khitan charge began to break up, with different groups pulling ahead or falling behind, and eventually routed before ever reaching the ford.

Jochi, sensing opportunity to wipe out all of the Khitan cavalry, eagerly ordered his men across the ford to pursue. But it was a trap: behind one of the many hills in the Turov countryside was a line of Khitan pikes, backed up by all the archers Diluguin had brought along with him.

When Jochi saw the Khitan horse ride up and over the onrushing hill instead of skirting at its feet, he realized the danger--too late. Pulling up and crying for his men to halt, only a few even heard him, and less obeyed. If their liege was too old and feeble to seize victory and glory, they would themselves.

The Khitan cavalry thundered down the far side of the hill and passed between pre-arranged gaps in the pike line. “Five hundred horse-lengths!” one of the cavalry captains cried as he rushed past, giving the Mongol distance behind them.

After the Khitan horse passed through and wheeled to participate in the trap, the pike line closed. And as soon as the Mongol horse crested the hill before them, the archers loosed.

More pikemen died from being crushed under horses than from Mongol bows and spears. Khitan archers slew the horses out from under their riders by the hundreds, and as the dying horses crashed into the hill, the horses behind them lost their footing in a panic at the sudden obstacles before them, tripping and breaking limbs, tossing their riders and piling up even greater obstacles for the still-onrushing cavalry behind them. Those who somehow managed to survive faced pikemen before them, and Khitan cavalry wheeling on their flanks.

Only two thousand Mongols survived the trap.

When news reached Diluguin and his reserves that the trap was successful and the Mongols were routed, Diluguin raced to his small son and picked him up as if he were a young child, laughing and spinning him around in his glee.

The experience would have been deeply embarrassing to Moshan, if not for the spirit of revelry that pervaded the entire army. Rather than smirking or ridiculing the small man, as he had been used to, the army laughed mirthfully and feted him as their great commander, and not at all in jest; they had come to respect Moshan both on and off the field of battle. Although other nobles might call Moshan ‘malformed’ in the manner of Djoborin, the Imperial Army treated him with the greatest respect, always referring to him as the Di Yi Taisi, or First Prince.

Moshan was not used to such respect. Although a direct patrilineal descendent of Daweizu and the first son of the reigning Huangdi (and thereby due the greatest respect possible in Khitan society), in practice Moshan had never even been treated as an equal by any but his father, much less given the respect due his rank; his pale skin made him an outcast among Khitan who viewed him as a bastardization of their blood, and his dwarfism set him aside as sinful and misshapen even to peasants. His own grandfather, Weizong, had refused to ever see him and had castigated his father for ever permitting such a thing to be born. Although political necessity had forced Weizong to apologize for the latter, he had never changed his mind on the former, and had openly stated the only reason he saw fit to apologize for demanding Diluguin cast Moshan aside was Moshan's dwarfism making him irrelevant--his deformity meant that he could never mount a horse, and that meant he could never be an heir to the throne. Why create bad blood over a non-entity?

But Diluguin had defended his son, as he always had. Even before he had selected Moshan as his successor, Diluguin had never rued his birth, or his dwarfism. Until Weizong had given his halfhearted apology, he had almost given up the throne for Moshan’s sake, fighting with his father over the rights of Moshan and his lowborn Lietuvai mother, Milda. Both of them were his choice, Diluguin insisted, and he would set aside neither.

When Moshan’s first son was born while they were on campaign, that he should bear the name of the father Moshan loved above all else was foregone.

Jochi’s scattered forces had fled west, deeper into the Jin Khidan Zhou, before turning hard north and attempting to skirt back into the plains with which they were familiar by means of the lands of Talivaldas II, a tributary of their own tributary, the broken Khitan “Emperors” of House Turburur.

It was this movement which the Khitan attempted to track, seizing the fortifications of the Russian marcher-lords along the banks of the Smolnya as they advanced, partly in punishment for the Russians raising their swords against fellow “Christians,” and party out of a simple need for funds--these lords had wives, sons and daughters that could be ransomed in order to pay the Imperial Army, which at the best of times was a funnel into which the state was forced to pour the lion’s share of its wealth.

Eventually Jochi’s host was isolated at the headwaters of the Smolnya, in Vyazma. Blocked by the river to their west and the onrushing Khitans from their southeast, the Mongols were forced to give battle. Although Jochi and a small band of loyalists escaped, for the remaining men of the army it was a piecemeal slaughter.

The annihilation of the last independent host at Vyazma was the end for Jochi. There were no more horsem*n to call upon; almost 30,000 Mongol men had been killed in the span of just seven months, an incalculable blow to Jochi’s Khanate. Even if Diluguin had no further designs upon the Mongols it would have spelled the end of Jochi’s pretensions as the All-Ruler; his vassal Aqas, unbled by Diluguin's invasion, would have overthrown him themselves.

But Diluguin did have further plans.

“’Their men will become our kindling; their women our slaves; their babes, targets for our arrows,’” Diluguin cried, reciting the text of Daweizu’s proclamation. “Their men have been burned, their horses slain. But I have seen no women, no babes, no Borjigin blood! We have won, but victory is not enough. Blood for blood, pain for betrayal: we march east, we march to avenge the dishonor of Dashi!”

The Mongols would ever rue the day that their Genghis Khan, overconfident in his pride and power, ordered that the Monument to Dashi be broken and defaced.

Temujin had been terrified of Agdji the Destroyer, as all Mongols were to one extent or another; had Agdji still had the spears of the Ten-Thousand at his beck, he would never have dared such a thing. But Temujin knew that Agdji had Parted the Spears by the time he arrived in the plains of Emil, and knew also that defacing a Khitan monument and surviving would instill even greater loyalty and respect in his men.

Temujin was certainly correct, insofar as his men being amazed that Agdji Huangdi did not ride forth and destroy him. But it was a short-lived respect, the payment for which was to be unbearable. For Temujin was dismissive of the settled Khitan and any reprisal they might try to muster, as all his descendants would be--until Muqshi.

After Vyazma, Diluguin rode his army hard, pushing them quickly southeast toward the Mongol encampment at Muqshi. They slaughtered what settlements they came across--Khitan traitors or Mongols, it did not matter; both were enemies--as well as any herds they saw. But mostly they marched as quickly as they could be compelled to, for the real prize was at the camps of the Khan.

The night of the 6th of October, cold and with the wind blowing hard from the east, the Imperial Army of the Jin Khidan Zhou finally reached the outskirts of the encampment of the Khan, ahead of all resistance. The whole horizon was dark in all directions save for the dim, flickering light of the fires of the camp before the Khitan host. There was no moon in the sky that night, and thus with the distant fires of the Mongol camp the only light for kilometers around, the Khitan closed in a great ring around the encampment, getting within a kilometer without being espied.

With the distant light of the encampment cutting through the darkness just enough to make out the contours of the Emperor's face, the deed began. It started with but three words of order, the only ones that needed to be spoken that day: “Leave none alive.”

The Rape of Muqshi was, geopolitically, possibly the most consequential event since the restoration of the Isma’ili and proclamation of the rebirth of Muhammed in the form of Razin Hunayn. Not because it showed the Mongols that the descendants of Agdji were serious about annihilating them to the last, although this was also a consequence of that day of fire and death, and forever after left the Mongols cowering in fear of the true Emperors in the west. No--Muqshi was consequential because, in a single day, it destroyed the Golden Horde.

Some historians have argued that the Golden Horde’s death-knell was on the hills of Turov, where Jochi’s last remaining army of moderate strength had been destroyed. While a compelling argument on the surface, such an analysis lacks substance. The riders of the Golden Khanate had bound themselves to Jochi and his line through their complicity in his betrayal of his brothers to seize the title of All-Ruler, and even utterly defeated, if Diluguin had chosen that moment to abandon the campaign and ride back west, though his vassal Aqas undoubtedly would have removed Jochi from the throne, one of Jochi’s own children would have become Khan (albeit one entirely beholden to his Aqas, a thin puppet dancing on thick strings), slowly rebuilt their armies, and eventually threatened the Jin Khidan Zhou again.

The Rape of Muqshi ended any possibility of the Golden Horde’s continued existence. The order was not pillage, nor prisoners, nor even to make an example of a few: the order was eradication, something the Mongols had never been so brutally comprehensive in. For the Khitan, crying “Agdji Huangdi! Agdji Huangdi! Daweizu! Dashi Huangdi!” stampeded the camp with fire and steel, slaying anything and anyone within. No quarter was given, nor any explanations asked; prisoners were cut down alongside their captors, so that Diluguin, dispassionately surveying the bloodshed, could be absolutely certain that none who should have been killed could escape.

The brutality of the Rape of Muqshi recalled scenes of Daweizu’s conquests, not least because it was so brutally, inhumanely effective. In one night of blood, Diluguin had eradicated Jochi’s entire line. But one single daughter, Mongoljin, survived the slaughter, and only because she had already been married off. The whole camp was burned to the last, and the Khitan even waited until the morning to kill any Mongols who might have clung to life overnight, or feigned death in the darkness.

When Jochi eventually returned to his home, he found nothing but bodies hewn as they lay, burnt camps and wagons, a pile of thousands of horses hacked into small pieces (his personal herd), and an inky black stone sitting right where his yurt had once stood.

THEIR MEN WILL BECOME OUR KINDLING; THEIR WOMEN OUR SLAVES; THEIR BABES, TARGETS FOR OUR ARROWS. THEIR MONGREL GRASSLANDS WILL BECOME OUR HUNTING PRESERVES, THEIR PALACES OF DIRT OUR PLACES OF DEFECATION. THEIR GREAT ACCOMPLISHMENTS WILL BE BURNED TO DUST BEFORE THE MIGHT OF THE DA LIAO, WHO WILL NEVER FORGET THE AFFRONT THAT EXISTING IN THE SAME WORLD AS THE MONGOL ANIMALS HAS FORCED UPON THEIR NOBLE LIVES. AT THE POINT OF KHITAN SPEARS, THEIR END WILL COME--SLOWLY AND ARDUOUSLY, AS THEY THEMSELVES HAVE MADE US SUFFER.

It is said that Jochi, upon seeing the desolation and the words of the so-called ‘black missive,’ suffered the same fate his eldest brother had: the strain broke his mind, and he entered into a vegetative state from which he never recovered. Though no Khitan sword touched him, in all but name Jochi Borjigin was slain by Yaerud Diluguin.

Although the eradication of the Jochids would not prove to be as absolute as Diluguin or Moshan believed at the time, the blow they struck was still fatal to the Golden Horde. No population base remained from which to rebuild the Mongol armies, and no heir of Jochi’s body yet lived. The steppe descended into chaos.

For Diluguin and Moshan, the concerns of the steppe no longer mattered following the eradication of the Jochids. Although there were Mongols and rebel Khitan infesting the steppe aplenty, they were matters for a future day, of little concern to the Huangdi or prince in that moment.

The destruction of Muqshi, both knew, was a point of vindication. For Diluguin, more than the death of Djoborin it legitimized his line’s right to rule the Jin Khidan Zhou. Personally, it also lifted from Diluguin something of the crushing weight of the expectations of his grandfather Daweizu, who had named him his eventual heir before Diluguin had even become a man. Though Diluguin did not make the connection himself, like Daweizu acquitted himself of Dashi’s confidence when he reached the Mountain of Dreams, so too did Diluguin acquit himself of Daweizu when he crushed the Mongols beneath him, and made them fear the Liao as the true Emperors once again.

For Moshan, the campaign was less glorious. Kind by nature and caring less for the opinions of his great ancestors (knowing as he did that they would have hated him simply because of the way he looked), he thought the brutality his father had shown in the destruction of Muqshi disturbing and unbecoming. Still, the campaign had real benefits for the Di Yi Taisi, who had bound the Imperial Army utterly to him and was accounted, surprisingly, as a legendary tactician who had largely planned out the two setpiece battles of Turov himself. Although never his father’s equal, Moshan was given the real recognition he deserved as a strategist.

Chapter 16: The Hongwu Emperor, Pt. III - The Conference of Prague

Chapter Text

Chief in Diluguin’s mind during the ride back to the Jin Khidan Zhou was the matter of Poland.

The Gryfita had proven incompetent and untrustworthy a half-dozen times, and not merely to the Yaerud. Pope Gregorius VII, who oversaw the confirmation of the findings of the Conclave of Galich, initially only permitted the Khitan to settle eastern Poland because the Gryfita were seen as so utterly incompetent (and possibly even heretical, given that many of their dynasty still practiced the old Pommeranian ways) that the Khitan, even with their own questionable conversion, were seen as the better alternative.

But now, having murdered Ago’s daughter, then betrayed Diluguin following Ago’s mercy in permitting them to continue to live and reign (and even sheltering them in his munificence!), there were no more chances left for them. They were not merely traitors and liars, but an active liability on the borders of the Jin Khidan Zhou, one which Diluguin thought to eradicate.

It was Moshan, again, who stayed his hand. Although the Huangdi wished to simply cross the border and wipe out all the Gryfita he came across, Moshan persuasively argued for a better course.

“We have just fulfilled the terms of the Conclave,” the dwarf chirped. “We swore to shelter Europe, and we did, yet Europe betrayed us at the same time. We could conquer Poland and no Christian realm would deny that we had the right, but even if we had the right, we would be seen as conquerors. Foreign conquerors. Remember the tales of our history.

"Right now, our political capital is strong. We should follow Daweizu’s example and call a gathering of rulers to legitimize our conquest. The Poles will accept us if the Pope excommunicates the Gryfita and passes their crown to us.”

For his part, Diluguin was not convinced. Although he still favored Lithuanians over Khitans following the Kinslayer's Gambit, they were the exception: he was not particularly trusting of the Catholic Church, tending to favor the traditional Khitan friendship with the Roman Empire and the Orthodox Church as his predecessors had. Still, there was no harm in trying, and it was certainly true that the Khitans were presently in a politically and militarily advantageous position; although Diluguin had his doubts, perhaps the Pope would prove unexpectedly amiable.

In fact, when word reached Rome of Diluguin’s request for a “Conference on the Status of the Polish Kingdom,” Urban IV proved positively eager to host one. Although a zealot who was not by nature a friend of the Khitans, the betrayal of the Poles and violation of the terms of the Conclave of Galich had tarnished the reputation of Catholicism, while in the same breath Diluguin’s victory against the Mongols had proven that the Khitans upheld the Conclave. Urban knew that the Khitans could have simply marched into Poland if they had wished, and realized that, if they were not given concessions, they would likely take the territory by force. A conference on its status was an opportunity for the Church to save face, and perhaps even save an independent Poland. If not, the Church’s direct involvement would at least allow it to set the terms of the integration, which might prevent the Khitan from growing too powerful.

Urban duly proclaimed a Conference on the matter, open to “all those Lords for whom the matter of the Kingdom holds especial significance,” set to begin in the autumn of that year in the city of Prague. It goes without saying that the Poles were not represented.

Although the Khitan attempted to move the Conference into a full-on Conclave with both Churches fully represented, consequentially the Roman Empire was not to be present. Its young Empress, Marina, had overthrown her elder brother Andronikos II in a palace coup some six years before, following his crushing defeat in the first Isma’ili Jihad due to his wasteful and dangerous involvement in an ill-fated attempt to reconquer Italy. Although Marina came to the throne young, vital and with a clear plan to restore the Empire to glory, her status as a woman brought her many enemies, both within and without the Empire, and in the interim she has been faced with a constant series of civil wars and conflicts with the resurgent Muslim threat in Anatolia. A recent and devastating outbreak of Typhus within Constantinople guarantees that, even if the Empress were free from local conflicts, she would not be able to even send a representative to the meeting.

Historians often make much of the absence of Constantinople at the Conference, and point to it as the defining moment at which Huangjin Zhongxin was forced away from their long preferential relationship with the Roman Empire and towards the Catholic Church. This is a gross trivialization of the situation, and moreover elides that the Khitan never stopped looking to the Roman Empire as their closest and most valuable allies.

It is undeniable, though, that recent affairs in the Empire had given the Khitans pause. The court intrigue, constant overthrowing of Emperors, and foolhardy attempts to invade and sack other Christian realms had soured the court--and especially the bureaucracy, which is often overlooked in histories of the Early Empire--on the current Imperial political climate and its goals. That, much more than Marina’s absence at this particular Conference, would influence Khitan policy toward the Roman Empire going forward.

All realms bordering Poland or holding stake in lands presently held or strongly influenced by the Gryfita were invited to come to the Conference. As the talks were to be held in Prague, the first two delegates were all but guaranteed: representatives of the Holy Roman Emperor, Erchenbreht von Hohenzollern, and the King of Bohemia, Boleslaw Premyslovci.

As it would happen, although both of these men declared for the Conference, only one would make it. Erchenbreht would be deposed by his own vassals in July of that year, after just over a year of rule--none other than Boleslaw would be elected to replace him as Emperor! A conference meant to take place at Prague for convenience would thus instead be hosted by the Emperor himself, in his capital city.

In an amusing anecdote, it’s said that Urban IV had already set out for Prague before being informed of the election of Boleslaw, and when he arrived in Prague the new Emperor made Urban blessing his rule a precondition of using the city for the Conference. Backed into a corner, the flustered Pope was forced to crown Boleslaw far more quickly than he had anticipated, and at no political cost to the wily new Emperor.

The second ruler to declare for the Conference was King Zapolsky Zoltan of Hungary--though ‘King’ might be too polite a term for the man, who ruled more akin to a tyrant, and at any rate was never crowned. He did not care about Poland, save for the border territories of Raciborz and Sandec, both of which he wanted as border marches to the north, whatever else happened to the crown.

Although Zoltan was a mighty warrior even by Khitan standards, he had none of the honor or refinement which the Khitan had begun to once again exercise. He was a brutish, violent man, ruling a realm which had been in constant tumult ever since its short-lived sacking by the It-Oba Khanate in the late 1220s, which had overthrown the royal house of Arpad and sapped much of the wealth and population from the Danubian plains, leaving its kings little better than paupers.

Although in some ways this gave Zoltan his strength--he was such a skilled and violent commander precisely because of constantly fighting against the It-Oba as they retreated from the plains of Hungary--it also left him ultimately rather powerless. He was a small, yapping dog: loud for his size, but with not enough weight to back up his spunk by half.

The final lord to declare for the Conference was King Asser III of Denmark, an altogether more powerful ruler. As the King of Denmark and Regent of Sweden (technically Sweden had its own King, but Asser III was involved in an almost-neverending struggle to depose him and seize the throne for himself), he had stake in the conflict principally through his proximity to the Pommeranian coast, and through one of his vassals, Rolf “the Wise,” ruling the island of Rana across the Oresund from Sjaelland.

Due to Asser’s involvement in the war with Sweden, however, the King delegates his position at the Conference to the Lord of Skane, Prince-Archbishop Olav II Galen. It is not immediately clear what Asser’s interests might be, though it is safe to assume that he will demand at least some stake in Pommerania, should Poland be dissolved.

As preparations for the Conference accelerate, surprising news from the east arrives. Although the chaos in the steppe had been largely beyond the interests of Diluguin ever since the eradication of the house of Jochi, the news was just that: Jochi’s house had not been eradicated at all!

Jochi’s infant grandson, Khutula the Posthumous, was born just days before the catatonic old Khan died. The son of Jochi’s penultimate son, Yesunge (who was known to have been killed at the massacre at Muqshi) and his first wife Khogaghchin, Khutula survived only because his mother had gone to Tamatarkha for the duration of her pregnancy, as the cold climate of Muqshi did not bode well for her health. Despite being weak of constitution, within hours of Jochi’s death Khutula was proclaimed Khan.

The circ*mstances of Khutula’s life are greatly interesting, beyond his mere survival. His father Yesunge had been a friend to the Bolghar people whom Daweizu had almost eradicated in his march across the steppe, and, disfavoring Tengrism due to its association with the Khitan, had adopted their own heretical Kharijite movement as his own faith, and the faith of his wife. Thus, when Khutula was born, he represented not only the last Jochid ruler on the steppe (and one without a herd, Diluguin having slaughtered all of Jochi’s horses--Khutula would soon have to begin ruling more like a tribal chief than a horselord), he also represented a sudden and surprising shift in the political landscape of the steppe, placing an Islamic heresy in ascendance.

Of course, Khutula is an infant. His rule is a joke at best; within hours of his proclamation, many of his vassals were already proclaiming themselves as Khans--Muqshi did end the Golden Horde, even if it did not fully end the Jochids. But Khutula’s faith, and his unexpected survival, did make their mark on the fluid political landscape of the near east, a matter which Diluguin intended to press home at the Conference.

It did not escape Diluguin, nor Moshan, that the road to the Conference passed directly through Polish territory. Branimir II knew the Conference was occurring, and knew that, at best, ending his misrule was one of the chief objectives of the meeting. Had Diluguin and Moshan passed through those lands without a sizeable escort, their deaths would be all-but-assured.

The need to travel to Prague in honor and security prompted the creation of the Imperial Guard, a military force comprised of the elite cavalry units of the Imperial Army, sworn to the defense of the person of the Emperor.

Although over the centuries the Imperial Guard would eventually shift drastically in structure and form the nucleus of the Jin Khidan Zhou’s first true standing armies, in this early period the Imperial Army remained a hybrid levied force, and the dream of a restored standing army was yet far away. The Guard was designed solely to protect the Emperor’s person and to ensure that he arrived at his destinations safely. Their maiden voyage through Poland was as real a challenge as any they would ever face.

Yet, true to their elite status, the Guard brought Diluguin and Moshan to Prague safely. No less than three assassination attempts were foiled on the Polish roads, and though the delay caused by the assassins led the Huangdi to be two days late to the talks, neither he nor Moshan suffered any other harm.

The talks thus formally began on the 3rd of October, 1250, with Pope Urban IV, Diluguin and Moshan, Prince-Archbishop Olav II Galen, King Zapolsky Zoltan of Hungary, and Holy Roman Emperor Boleslaw Premyslovci in attendance.

Although the Khitan had come far from their earliest days under Daweizu, when the Huangdi’s words at the Conclave of Galich were translated into Polish and Hungarian by traders who barely knew the languages themselves, the Jin Khidan Zhou was still a distant and--by European standards--unusual realm. Although many Khitan could now speak Hungarian and Polish fluently (Hungarian due to their close trade ties, Polish due to the great mass of Polish peasants within the country), the Imperial House still set itself apart and learned to speak only two tongues in childhood: the Khitan language, and the pidgin of the Middle Kingdom, which as heirs of the Liao they were still taught to speak and write (this despite it being a dead language for the rest of the realm--only the bureaucrats still used it, and they only wrote with it).

With Danes, Dutch (for such was Pope Urban), Germanized Czechs, and Hungarians all in attendance, the easiest language to utilize would have been High German, which all parties save the Khitan could speak. Yet this would place Diluguin at a disadvantage, and not a single one of those present at the Conference wanted to insult the Lord who had just crushed an entire Mongol state in less than a year.

The solution was the versatile Moshan, who had taught himself Latin in order to broaden his access to scholarly works produced by the Church. Although Diluguin could read some Latin (for much the same reasons), he was not proficient with the language; Moshan, on the other hand, knew it so well that he could speak it. As both Urban and Olav could speak Latin and Boleslaw was willing to provide his court bishop, Archbishop Heinrich of Burgau, as translator for both himself and King Zoltan, Diluguin requested that the Conference take place in Latin, to which all parties acceded.

Reading stories of the dust-clad and brutish Daweizu from his childhood, Urban IV had not anticipated the sight of the regal Diluguin, clothed in silks, with his perfectly-trimmed beard and the beautiful golden crown of the Liao, set with a single great topaz piece carved with a token of their Imperial heritage, adorning his head.

Yet far more surprising to all those present was Moshan. His proficiency with spoken Latin would have been unusual alone, yet his appearance was far more of a surprise. Pale and stunted, Moshan was visibly the polar opposite of his father, and yet Diluguin clearly treated him with great respect and openly introduced him to the assembled delegates as his heir, clearly anticipating that they would also treat him with honor.

Pop histories have often claimed that the friendship which Moshan struck up with Urban IV began because both of them were short men. This is clearly a facile argument; although Urban’s shortness might have disarmed Moshan slightly and made for a point of commiseration, Urban’s accounts of the meeting speak only of his great joy in being able to converse with one of the Khitan royalty in a shared tongue, and his very positive impression of Moshan, whom he referred to as “a man of great intelligence & wit, and humble character,” further remarking that “[his] opinion of the Khitan ha[d] been greatly increased upon recognizing that a man physically deformed could yet be held in such high esteem among a people which fifty years before we had considered little more than barbarians,” and that “it is now my great desire to learn more of these people, for whom one ruler is a tall, dusky warlord and the next a pale and bookish man, yet both elected to lead by their sworn men, despite their great differences in appearance & character.”

For his part, Moshan also found Urban fascinating, and spent many days with him discussing theology and history when the Conference was on break. They would remain lifelong friends.

The first matter brought before the Conference--the “matter to be decided before all else is discussed,” as Diluguin put it--was the determination of the legal borders of the Jin Khidan Zhou.

“When Daweizu, whom you know as Agdji I, first settled the Jin Khidan Zhou, by terms of the Conclave of Galich all Lithuanian land east of the Carpathians not occupied by the King of Poland was considered legal territory for our settlement. We have faithfully abided by the terms of the Conclave, and, excepting my rebellious uncle Djoborin,” Diluguin acknowledged, nodding to King Zoltan of Hungary, “who has been punished for his transgressions, never have the Khitan ever struck against other Christians, or moved west in search of land or power. Our eyes have always been to the north and east: to the lands given us by the Conclave, and to our ancient home.

“Yet ever we have been the subject of betrayals at the hands of our western neighbors. Some of this, as I am sure you agree, comes from the Gryfita, whose misdeeds we are here assembled to address. But part of it also comes from the legal status of the Kingdom of Poland and its borders.

“While by general European agreement these lands were given to our settlement in the Conclave, their legal status remains in flux. We own them and have settled them, but many of my own subjects are Poles. The Polish nobility still consider our lands part of the Kingdom of Poland, Polish land settled by Khitans as it were. And our presence in them antithetical to the unity of their Kingdom.

“Before aught else is done, I request that the Conference agree to a formal delineation of the border between Poland and the Jin Khidan Zhou, to flatly and finally put an end to the misjudgment upon the part of Poland that the lands which we were given in faith and paid for in blood belong to any but our own.”

“What do you expect?” Zoltan snapped. “When you settled you took great bites out of Poland. There aren’t any rivers or mountains up there to carve a border out of. You want us to acknowledge you own half the damned thing before we even talk about its King?”

“No,” Diluguin replied, “we own less than half of the duchies of Kujawy, Wielkopolska, and Krakow. We are content to let them remain legally with Poland, under our current administration as a function of the terms of the Conclave.

“What we require is an acknowledgement that the heart of the realm as we settled it in 1209 is our own: the part of the Kingdom where Khitans reside, and Jesus is called Tengri. The territories of Huangjin Zhongxin; the Majaus; the duchies of Sandomierz, Belz, and Volyn; and the Galich, one of our most sacred places, where the Conclave was held.”

“Piss on that!” Zoltan spat. “Galich is not Khitan! My men cross the Carpathians all the time, and it’s a part of the damned Rus, as it’s always been.”

Though Urban’s mouth was pursed in disapproval, he asked, “Is this true?”

“It is,” Moshan croaked in acknowledgement. “Though there are many Khitan settlers there, and the local residents have taken up many of our peoples’ cultural practices. Whether Khitans live there or not, though, Galich is our holiest site, the place of reconciliation with you all,” the dwarf gestured broadly. “We would abandon the capital before we would abandon it.”

“I won’t stand for it,” Zoltan spat. “What do you want, to bottle us all up? To isolate every Christian realm and claim the whole God-damned east for yourself? Galich is across the border from us! It’s fair land for anyone who can take it.”

Diluguin’s eyes were alight with fury. “Do you EVER think that you could take it, petty King?” he asked.

This seemed to infuriate the over-proud Zoltan, who made to lunge at Diluguin and had to be restrained. The Pope, in shock at his dishonorable behavior and in taking the Lord's name in vain, demanded that the Hungarian be expelled from the Conference that very day, and shortly thereafter he was excommunicated for his impiety, as well as his dishonorable threats toward the same Lord who had so recently protected his lands.

The remaining delegates were ashamed and humiliated by the actions of Zoltan. His disrespect and callous ambition even in the face of the Khitans’ great sacrifices on his behalf seemed to do nothing but legitimize Khitan concerns about Europeans. Determined to present an open hand, the conference immediately acceded to Diluguin’s request in full. Other lands held by the Jin Khidan Zhou were not mentioned, save to note that “those lands occupied… in compliance with the terms of the Conclave of Galich are to be considered legally held and settled by the Emperors of the Khitan,” but Huangjin Zhongxin, Majaus, Sandomierz, Belz, Volyn and the Galich were all legally mandated as being territory belonging solely to the Jin Khidan Zhou “and no other… for all time.”

Talk slowly moved to the matter of the Gryfita, whom all the assembled parties agreed would need to be deposed. Although who--or what--should stand in their place was not immediately evident, Asser III had a precondition for his support.

“My Lord,” Archbishop Olav II began, “is most concerned about Gryfita lands bordering his capital at Sjaelland across the narrow channel. Dobroniega Gryfita, cousin to the King, rules the territory of Rostock--my liege wishes to ensure that his lands will be protected from Gryfita reprisal.

“The King is willing to provide ships and men to carve out a realm for Kamil Tholenzi, an enemy of the Gryfita, along the coast. He will do this on the condition that the Holy Roman Emperor,” Olav nodded to Boleslaw, “agrees to permit the Danemark to hold Rostock as a shipping entrepot on the North Sea in perpetuity, and that the remaining Pommeranian lands, should they ever be in contest, be divided between Denmark and the Empire on the basis of whoever should first successfully claim them, with no legal precedent for occupation.”

The Emperor, fresh to a throne which had long suffered turmoil and intrigue and not at all prepared for a fight, was eager to agree to these terms--he did not, after all, rule Rostock to begin with, and it was no great loss to permit the Danish King to take it.

But the terms soon began to grow more sour, as talk turned to establishing the borders of the new Kingdom of Poland. The assembled Lords agreed that Poland had occupied the trans-Oder and eastern Pommerania for long enough for them to be considered integral territory of the crown of Poland, but both Olav and Diluguin balked at the idea of permitting the Poles to control the entire Pommeranian coast. They argued that the coast should instead be divided at the mouth of the Oder, with the city of Stettin marking Poland’s northwestern border. The lion’s share would consequently go to Poland, but the city of Dymine and fortifications at Gutzkowe would be split from the Pommeranian holdings and added to the territory of the Danish tributary Kamil of Rana.

The Emperor was far less inclined to permit this. “There would be no unclaimed ports left on the eastern Baltic by such an agreement,” Boleslaw protested. “The Oder runs through many of my lands, and the Empire looks to the port of Stettin as an important center of trade. If we lose the chance to possess Dymine as compensation, I could not agree to this.”

Eventually the Emperor was won over by Diluguin, who promised Khitan support to seize from the Poles any territory they still held west of the Oder that was not on the coast; to divide the city of Stettin, with the west bank occupied by German-aligned lords and only the east treated as Polish territory; and a private promise that German merchants plying trade through Stettin would face no dues, so long as the Emperor would support Diluguin’s demand that he be given a claim on the Polish crown.

After the minor crisis of Gutzkowe was resolved, the assembled parties had finally agreed on the final, legal borders of the Jin Khidan Zhou and Kingdom of Poland.

For the most part, the Jin Khidan Zhou displaced territories of the Rus, as King Zoltan had argued, although it had laid claim to Majaus and Sandomierz, duchies which had upon a time marked Poland’s eastern border.

To compensate the crown of Poland for these losses, the trans-Oder (Lubusz) and Pommerania came to be regarded as de jure integral to the crown of Poland, with the aforementioned removal of Gutzkowe on the coast. In essence, Poland’s borders simply moved north and west to compensate for its losses to the east.

With only nomads ruling the Volyn upon Khitan arrival and none to be dispossessed by the extension of the Jin Khidan Zhou into its ancient territories, the most serious loser of this redrawing of borders was Wendland, which had lost the vast majority of its coast, its major trade city at Rostock, and many of its hinterlands, which had been promised to Boleslaw by Diluguin. There was no single lord of the Wends, however, so even this was not some great affront; it was merely an acknowledgement that the Wends were neither powerful, nor wealthy, nor well-trusted--they were, after all, the origin of the Gryfita dynasty.

With the matter of borders and spheres of influence established, the delegates moved on to the last topic wherein they were likely to find unanimous agreement: the fate of the Gryfita.

“The dynasty has been a plague ever since they first took the Polish throne,” Urban IV sighed. “They focused all of their wealth on reconquering their Wendish lands, and lost the whole of the east of Poland as payment for the few scraps they could recover. Crusades were launched in the name of reclaiming the territory they lost, but their craven Kings refused to participate in them. The Gryfita are the only Catholic realm that did not accept the Conclave, and never have. And then they went on to murder your own relatives,” Urban nodded to Diluguin and Moshan. “Your predecessor Ago showed mercy, a mercy I must admit I did not expect, only for you to be betrayed for your troubles.

“I agree that there can only be one recourse: the Gryfita must be entirely removed. It pains me to do it--not long ago I baptized Sieciech, Branimir’s son, myself; I truly believed their dynasty had changed. So much smoke, mirrors and broken promises. For the sake of Catholicism as a whole, such a dishonest band of brigands cannot be allowed to continue ruling. Branimir will be excommunicated, and the throne of Poland will be declared vacant.”

“The sole question, then,” Olav remarked, “is who should be given the right to rule it.”

“I do not think it would be wise for any of our realms to be given the throne,” Olav continued. “To give the crown to any of those assembled here would only infuriate the Poles. For their crown to be bandied about while none of their lords are even present to argue for it would only convince them that their throne was bartered in a corrupt arrangement.

“Instead, it seems evident to me that we should return to the status quo. The throne should be given over to a vassal of the King who is agreeable to the Emperor,” Olav said, bowing slightly to Diluguin, “and the Polish lords should return to paying tithe to the Khitan in exchange for their protection.”

This was an unacceptable arrangement, and both Urban IV and Boleslaw, altogether more perceptive than the slow and simple Olav, realized this. Diluguin would not tolerate another chance for betrayal. Though Urban still held out hope that the Kingdom might somehow be divided between Diluguin and Boleslaw, it was Boleslaw himself who crushed this hope. He had no desire to overextend his realm, and with Diluguin already promising him all land west of the Oder, he supported the Khitan claim in full.

“To return to the status quo,” Boleslaw began slowly, “is no repayment. To oust the Gryfita is not the sole issue; the greater concern, if I may be so bold, is that the Poles have thrice betrayed the Khitan, and even now border the capital of the Emperor. The Khitans have suffered loss of wealth and blood at the hands of the Poles, and the Gryfita being overthrown does not guarantee their safety.

“It seems obvious to me that, if the throne is to be given to anyone, it most properly belongs to the one to whom its current holder owes the greatest debt: that is Emperor Diluguin. Moreover he already he has many Poles within his borders, and unlike any future Polish ruler the Emperor is bound by the terms of the Conclave to seek no land to the west. If the throne is to be given to anyone, it should be his.”

“If it is the will of the Conference that the throne of Poland should be given to me, I will accept it,” Diluguin replied gracefully. “And I think it wise indeed: though the Mongol armies have been destroyed, the last living descendent of Jochi Khan rules still to the east, and is gathering armies. Europe is safe, for now, through our bravery. But for so long as even one Mongol Khan still rampages across the steppe, there is danger. Without security to the west, we cannot be sure of victory. Even our recent victory almost turned to defeat with the Polish betrayal.”

This news about Khutula’s birth was strategically withheld from the delegates until precisely this moment, and caused a great tumult when it was revealed. The assembled lords had believed that the Mongol threat was over entirely, but as they probed Diluguin for more information, they gradually realized that not only were the Jochids still empowered (albeit only in the most vague sense of the term), but that there were more Mongol realms yet beyond them, eager to ride west and become the next great threat to Europe.

With this new information, and with Boleslaw’s support, Urban IV agreed to proclaim Diluguin King of Poland by virtue of the debts owed to the Khitan by the Gryfita. On New Year’s Day, 1251, the Conference adjourned, with Yaerud Diluguin proclaimed by Pope Urban IV as the rightful King of Poland. From this point onward, the history of the Poles and the Khitans would be so imbricated as to never again be fully untangled.

Chapter 17: The Hongwu Emperor, Pt. IV - Madness

Chapter Text

The parties present at the Conference left largely in high spirits. Even if the Khitan had scored a lopsided victory in the talks, they were, after all, the injured party--if any side deserved the larger share of the spoils, it was the side which had bled for Europe and had only been stabbed in the back as recompense. The rulers present left very impressed with Diluguin, who cut the figure of a more refined Agdji I, and were also impressed with Moshan (and he with them, particularly Urban IV and Boleslaw).

The course of history might have been very different indeed, if not for what happened on the Huangdi’s return journey to Huangjin Zhongxin. Although by open accord all parties agreed not to disclose the findings of the Conference until Diluguin had returned to the capital, the disgraced Zoltan had long before sent a missive to Branimir, warning (without proof) that the Polish throne was going to be given to Diluguin.

Where before the assassination attempts were almost lazy, Branimir now sent an entire army detachment to waylay the Emperor. The Imperial Guard fought ferociously, but with Moshan’s disability he could not fight himself, and they were forced to give most of their attention to defending him rather than the Huangdi. As the Emperor raced toward the Khitan border--and safety--at Gniezno, he just barely failed to parry a strike aimed at his side.

It was later reported that the Emperor was so close to the border that the guards watching the road there could hear his great cry. Heedless of the danger they rushed down the road and, barely in time, reached the Huangdi and were able to drive off his assailants. But they were too late to spare him a grievous wound: his lower leg hung by but a thread of flesh, almost entirely severed from his body.

The Emperor never blamed the Imperial Guard, nor his son. Even as Moshan rushed to his side later that day, all but bleating his apologies, Diluguin’s first question was of his safety. “That they protected you is all I need to know,” the Emperor said--though his voice was pained.

The maiming of Diluguin was incredibly consequential. The Huangdi spent the remainder of his life in constant pain, and the stump never fully healed (largely due to his own refusal to rest and permit it to do so), bleeding often and weakening the once-mighty ruler.

Worse yet, though, that it was ordered by Branimir II greatly exacerbated the latent anti-Polish prejudices nascent within Khitan society. Diluguin did not see in the attempt a last, desperate effort by Branimir to save his throne--instead, he saw a coordinated effort by the Polish nobility to dispossess him of something which was his “by right,” a conspiracy which simply was not true. Even the Kujawsky, who had been among the most Sinophile of the Polish lords and who had spoken out often in favor of alliance rather than conflict with the Jin Khidan Zhou, were not spared in the Emperor’s view.

Diluguin waited only just over a month for his wound to be treated, but far too short a time to let it heal. Feverish and unwell, sensing conspiracies among the Poles that were not there and fearing the intervention of his vassals against him (vassals whom, after his victory against Jochi, would have only moved against him had they a death-wish), Diluguin declared that his war for the Polish crown would begin immediately.

“The Polish people are a traitorous group, from top to bottom,” he coughed weakly. “If they hate so greatly the idea of a Khitan King, I will oblige them. I will wipe their Kingdom out.”

Moshan was terribly disturbed by the change in his father’s disposition, and the young man's health also took a precipitous dip during this period, as he spent the majority of his days attempting to take as much work as he could off of his father’s hands. Added to this strain was the stress of constantly worrying about Diluguin's health, and whether or not he would break the terms of the Conference and undo all the work that they had done.

“Father, you cannot simply murder them,” Moshan pleaded. “The King must die, surely, and Europe will not oppose it. But we have no proof that the remaining nobility were even involved. We cannot simply kill them over a suspicion! They are Christians!”

“When has a Pole not betrayed us?” Diluguin raved. “If we leave them alive, we will all be under threat. They will serve the Mongols, they will fight to kill us all! What can be done but killing them? What other punishment can they face worthy of their crimes, which will neuter them for all time?”

Moshan bit his lip. He did not want to do it--it would be perilously close to violating the terms they had agreed to--but perhaps, just barely, it might work.

“I know of something that can be done,” he croaked.

The war itself was trivially easy, and hardly worth mentioning. As it had been ever since Wlodzimierz Gryfita had taken the throne seventy years before, the Polish Kingdom was atrophied and weak, with the King’s writ hardly running and the concept of unified defense entirely foreign.

When Diluguin’s armies approached Kalisz, enraged at the violence carried out against their Emperor’s person and threatening to burn the whole castle town to ash at the feet of the great fortification, King Branimir II appeared on the battlements and simply jumped off of them, ending his life and giving up before the war could even truly begin. His body was defaced by the Emperor’s soldiers and his head was placed on a pike in front of the castle gate before the Imperial Army marched out to quell any further dissent.

But there truly was rather little. Most of the Polish nobles welcomed the coming of Diluguin and the end of the misrule of the Gryfita, and if their people were furious, they kept them in line. Although Branimir’s wife and their son Sieciech slipped away to the Pommeranian coast and set up a rebel realm the goal of which was the restoration of Gryfita lands in Poland, as previously arranged Asser III’s armies soon fell on the realm and seized the valuable cities of the western coast from them, leaving them only the poor, midge-infested swamplands between the Oder and the mouth of the Vistula at Gdansk. Although they refused to acknowledge the conquest, Diluguin was in far too poor health to launch an attack against such unhealthy environs, and, for the moment, the last Gryfita realm persisted.

Diluguin soon summoned the Polish nobility to Gniezno to swear fealty, in a ‘ceremony’ that would become legendary for its ill-treatment of the Polish. It would take decades to fully repair the damage it caused.

The Poles who met Diluguin at Gniezno were shocked at how ill he looked. Campaigning when his leg was not yet fully healed had left him sallow and exhausted; a courtier had to rather conspicuously keep the Emperor propped upright while he passed his judgement.

“The Polish people,” he breathed, “have betrayed the Khitan at every turn. From the first Gryfita ruler, whose name I must confess I cannot even pronounce, you denied our right to settle these lands. Malowuj cruelly slaughtered my cousin. Branimir betrayed the mercy shown to him by Ago, a betrayal which almost cost us everything. But greatest of all is this,” he spat, gesturing to his absent leg.

“It was in the forest near to here that I suffered this injury, attacked by a band of soldiers in broad daylight, without declaration of war, in a cowardly attempt to slay myself and my son. In the lands of Spytko, Duke of Gdansk, this occurred. Has he anything to say?”

Spytko shuffled nervously, but did speak. “My King,” he said, stepping forward and kneeling, “I did not know of these deeds. None of the nobility did, save perhaps those of the Gryfita who held lands independent of the Crown. We were not party to the dishonor of our rulers--never have we been.”

“And yet you did not ever try to overthrow them yourselves,” Diluguin cried, shakily standing on his one leg and leaning heavily on a cane to support the remainder of his weight. “Never did you, ANY of you, attempt to throw off the yoke of this most evil house, which you tell me now you all loathed, and are glad to be rid of? For SEVENTY YEARS?”

The hall was silent, and Diluguin nodded wearily, as if it was nothing less than what he expected.

“So I thought, so I thought,” he cried, sitting himself back down carefully. “All Poles are duplicitous. You cannot be trusted with your own Kingdom, your own laws, your own customs. That is why I now do away with them: the Kingdom of Poland is forfeit.”

The Polish nobles, to a man, stood in protest of this. They were not even certain what the Emperor meant, but they knew that, whatever it was, it was unjust; they truly had not conspired against the Khitan, and though few loved them or their occupation of eastern Poland, all save the Gryfita acknowledged that they were there to stay, and knew of their usefulness in defending Poland from nomads and barbarians. To a man, prior to Diluguin's words, they had even thought the Khitan would be categorically better rulers.

Diluguin held up his hand for silence, and gradually the Polish quieted down--cognizant, as they had suddenly become, of the armed soldiers who ringed the room. For the moment they stood at attention, a simple honor guard for the nobility present--but each, they noted, was a Khitan, and each carried a polearm.

“The Kingdom of Poland no longer exists,” Diluguin continued. “It will never be held by anyone, not even of my House, ever again. By right of the will of Pope Urban IV the Kingdom was granted to me to do with as I will, and I will that its laws, customs and borders are no longer in effect: it is ended.

“Henceforth all Poles will belong solely to the Jin Khidan Zhou, subject to its laws and customs, with no autonomy from the wishes of the Emperors of my House. Yet since none of you belong to the heartland of the Jin Khidan Zhou as laid down by the Conference of Prague, neither shall you have any right to office, or to elect the heirs of the Empire. Poles are not Khitans, and do not have the privilege of determining the bearer of the Mandate of Heaven.

“And finally,” Diluguin finished, a harsh smile on his face, “to my own men go all disputed lands. Daerqa Kudji is named Tqosi of Kujawy; Siau Uldjin is named Tqosi of Wielkopolska; and Yaerud Hedeng is named rightful Duke of Krakow.”

The decision was among the harshest that Diluguin could have proclaimed, short of actually eradicating the Polish nobility. Whatever the Huangdi believed, the Poles truly were tired of the incompetence, petty intrigue, and dishonor of the Gryfita, and were ecstatic when the Khitan overthrew them. Even if they were not truly loyal to the Jin Khidan Zhou (and who could blame them? The Khitans were not their people), they were perfectly willing to accept the Khitans as rulers, at least for the time being.

Although Diluguin’s eradication of all the rights, privileges and autonomy for the Kingdom of Poland has been referred to by some historians as an inspired decision which prevented the Poles from ever mounting an effective independence movement from the Empire, serving to tie them more closely together with the other Imperial cultures and truly begin to bring about their integration into the Jin Khidan Zhou, even those who adhere to this argument must acknowledge that the cost was high. The Polish nobility, so thrilled at the overthrow of the Gryfita just the day before, left Gniezno in states varying from sullen to infuriated, unanimously with a low opinion of the “tyrannical” Emperor. Through his grants of the disputed border regions to Khitans, the Huangdi had pushed the already marginal Polish nobility even further west, and had radicalized them against Khitan rule.

It would take a long time, as well as many pledges and privileges, to get the Polish nobility to trust the Khitan again. Yet it was good that Moshan stopped his father short, for the wholesale eradication of the nobility would have been impossible to recover from.

It is interesting to note that, out of all of the Polish lords who became part of the Jin Khidan Zhou that day, Wladyslaw Kujawski was the only one who still considered himself a Sinophile. Although he was deeply mistrustful of the actions of Diluguin and protested strongly against the abolition of the Kingdom of Poland, he had a softer opinion toward Moshan, and privately told the Prince that he hoped that Moshan would be able to convince his father to reverse his decision.

“I do not think it will be possible to convince him to do anything of the sort,” Moshan told Wladyslaw before riding out from Gniezno. “I have saved your lives, and that was difficult enough.”

“The talk was truly of killing us all?” Wladyslaw asked in horror.

Moshan pursed his lips and nodded. “You must forgive my father, if you can,” he croaked sorrowfully. “He is the last of the warlords of our House, and when he suffers a loss, he can only think of avenging it. It was the wrong thing to do, but it’s all he knows.”

Although all is not yet complete, with Sieciech Gryfita still holding out his rebel realm on the coast of Pommerania and dreaming of a triumphant return to Poland, for the time being conflict on the border only simmers, and the shape of the Jin Khidan Zhou has been stabilized.

Although unbounded to the northeast, the Jin Khidan Zhou has begun to stabilize around natural borders to its east, west, and south. To the east, it has (at least temporarily) stopped at the Smolnya; to the west, the Oder marks its end; and to the south, it straddles the Carpathians down past the Mountain of Dreams. Although never the explicit intention of any of the ruling Emperors, circ*mstances have conspired to organize the Jin Khidan Zhou along the lines of largely defensible, natural borders.

Of course, as mentioned already, the period of conquest is not ended. Even if the Liao did not have an obligation to return to the Middle Kingdom, necessitating great expansion eastward, there is still the matter of Sieciech to address. But, for the moment, these concerns must be set aside; it has been over five years since the electoral moot held following the Kinslayer's Gambit, and, though it has been put off time and again as matters of greater import took precedence, it can no longer be set aside. With his wound still bleeding and his mind still hazy, Diluguin calls for an assembly at the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand, for the second electoral moot of his reign.

One of the many benefits of Diluguin’s eradication of enemies in the Gambit, victory against Jochi, and conquest of Poland was the combination of a lack of internal rivals and an outsized, legendary reputation.

Utilizing precedent from the Polish conquest that lands outside what were considered to be the heart of the Jin Khidan Zhou did not have the right to cast votes for the possession of the Mandate, in one fell swoop Diluguin dispossessed almost all rival Yaerud claimants from possessing a vote: Biaen the Beautiful of Kiev, Qutug II of Trakai, and Uldjin II of Podylashe (son of Uldjin I, son of Ago) were all no longer considered central landholders of the Jin Khidan Zhou, and no longer had a vote or a say in the moot.

Although few of the lords of the realm approved of the extreme restriction in the franchise (whereas previously all lords were equally able to cast their vote, even the Lithuanians), there was, again, no force within the Jin Khidan Zhou which could seriously stand up to Diluguin, or his reputation. The lords who now possessed the vote were in the extreme minority, but also the oldest landholders in the realm, and thereby the most powerful; they supported Diluguin’s decision, and that was enough to grudgingly force the remaining lords to acknowledge their defeat.

With a much smaller pool of electors to work with, it was also far easier to ensure that the ruling Emperor’s preferred candidate was selected. Although Diluguin’s brother Saradin would come dangerously close to being selected (an ongoing problem, with the lords of the realm always favoring elderly claimants), in the end Diluguin was able to gather sufficient support for Moshan to be formally declared his heir.

Diluguin ruled himself and rode upright for just long enough to set in place what he had to: the conquest of Poland, the punishment of its lords, and the succession of his beloved son Moshan as his heir. When he returned to Huangjin Zhongxin the low-grade fever he had struggled with for weeks had dissipated, to be replaced with a burning, pulsing heat. It was the sign of an infection which had taken in the unhealed wound of his severed leg.

Although the Huangdi was now taken to rest as he should have begun to do weeks before, the physicians for the Emperor believed that it was possibly already too late. The wound refused to heal now, and the gangrenous infection was spreading, both inside the Emperor’s body and across his leg. Amputation after amputation had to be performed to try saving the Huangdi’s life, but always the physicians, terrified that they would take too much and weaken the Emperor to his death in the process, never quite took enough to stop the infection from returning.

While Diluguin languished Moshan acted as regent for his father, as Diluguin himself had done during Ago's final days.

In truth, there was not much to be done; all seemed quiet, both to the west and the east. Moshan did tour Poland twice, meeting independently with the Polish lords and reassuring them that he would restore many of their privileges when he came to the throne (and, without much prompting, confirming that he would accept their right to the Catholic rite rather than the Khitan), but these journeys, aside from their practical purpose in preventing a general rising against Khitan rule, were more akin to a diversion than an example of Moshan being proactive. The days when Moshan left the city of Huangjin Zhongxin--indeed, the days when he left the palace--were rare indeed. He spent almost all of his time at his father’s side, tending to him and doing his best to nurse him through his illness, and the pain of the several botched amputations.

Contrary to Diluguin’s own preferences, Moshan even gave over the fortification of Konigsberg--the great castle which the Teutonic Knights had established on the coast of Prussia during the botched Northern Crusade, and which part of the city walls of Huangjin Zhongxin had been built around--to his young half-brother, Aerlu’or. Despite being a product of incest, which both Diluguin and Moshan did not wholly approve of, Aerlu’or was a kind, honest little boy who loved his father and was afraid for him. Moshan felt the same, and as their father often slipped in and out of consciousness, he kept Aerlu’or close by to him as their father struggled to survive.

Unfortunately, it was not to be.

A new plague swept down from the north, originating in Riga. Although it had been less than a decade since the Great Plague had passed through Huangjin Zhongxin, it appeared as though death had not yet had its fill, and men enough had returned to the city for the virulent disease to spread like fire throughout its districts once more. Although Moshan did everything he could to shield his father from catching the disease, he failed: Diluguin, already in fragile health, caught Consumption on top of all else.

His physicians simply gave up on him, telling Moshan that anything they could do would now only place him in greater risk; his health was so poor that even attempting to treat him could cause him to die instead of saving him. And so they left the boy alone, without even Aerlu’or at his side, in the room where he realized his beloved father would soon die.

“Father?” Moshan eventually croaked. “Are you awake?”

“Yes, yes…” Diluguin whispered. Once so strong and vital, he was visibly shrunken, curled in upon himself, pale and sweaty, with lidded eyes and shallow breaths.

“I am going to tell you what I desire most, father,” Moshan spoke slowly. “More: what I intend. And you are going to either give me leave or forbid me. I will obey you to my dying day. I will leave this choice to you.”

Diluguin listened quietly, not speaking or asking questions. Moshan often had to ensure that his father was still awake and aware, for usually he slipped out of consciousness every few minutes, but it appeared as though the frail Emperor put forth all of his effort to stay conscious for the sake of hearing his son’s words.

When Moshan concluded, Diluguin raised a brown, shaking hand to his son’s face and rubbed his cheek.

“You are… my boy,” he said. “My choice. I have always… loved you, Moshan. I have… always… trusted you. You will do this. If you… wish it, it will save us.”

Moshan gripped his father’s hand with both of his small ones as his tears began to flow, and his father’s fingers weakly grasped him.

“Only… only do not forget… the east, son,” Diluguin commanded. “Do not… forget where we… come from. We must return. Never forget. Never… never let… your children forget.”

“I won’t, father,” Moshan wept, anointing his father’s shaking hand with his tears. “I will never let them forget who we are.”

Then Diluguin smiled. Through all the pain, sorrow, and certainty of death, Moshan’s last memory of his father in life was his smile--weak, pained, but there nevertheless. “I love you, son,” were the final words he whispered, before he passed from consciousness.

Whether or not staying awake and aware for so long truly was too much on Diluguin’s ruined mind and body or whether his illness simply progressed, that day in his bedchambers was the last point at which the Huangdi was conscious. He soon passed into a coma, and shortly thereafter to his rest. The combined ailments were simply too much for his weakened form.

On June 12th, 1253, he who was born Yaerud Diluguin on the 16th of January of the year 1204, second son of Yaerud Agdji who was Weizong, who had been invested with the Mandate of Heaven at the age of forty-one and taking the regnal name of Hongwu, and who ruled in might and majesty for eight years, passed into the beyond and became as proclaimed by his heir Moshan ‘Weizu,’ Mighty Progenitor of the Liao Dynasty. His is the fourth row of spears in the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand.

Though he technically ruled for eight years, Diluguin was in fact only upright and in control of his faculties for six of them. Yet what Emperor has done more in six years than Diluguin? Defeating Djoborin and Qutug and securing the sole right of his line to succeed the throne; crushing the Jochid threat, ending the Golden Horde and almost entirely eradicating Jochi’s line; successfully calling for a Conference on the status of Poland and not only being named its new King, but also receiving a referendum from the Conference which empowered the Huangdi to significantly limit the voting potential of his vassals; conquering Poland and wiping out the independent power of the Polish crown; and, finally, securing for himself the guarantee that his beloved eldest son, Moshan, would inherit the throne as the new Huangdi. A typical Emperor of the Yaerud who had fought and won against the Mongols would consider themselves covered in glory, their place in the pantheon of Khitan Emperors assured; what, then, can be said of Diluguin, with all of his myriad accomplishments?

Daweizu was still the ruler who was needed on the steppe; Diluguin, in his place, would not have saved the Khitan as he did. But, overall, Diluguin was the best Emperor the Liao had had since their time in the Middle Kingdom, the greatest holistic example of their culture, refinement and learning while simultaneously inheriting their great martial tradition and Imperial pedigree. He is remembered as one of the best Liao Emperors, despite the shortness of his reign and his questionable treatment of the Poles.

Diluguin is also remembered as being the last of the Emperors of the “Early Empire.” Moshan and his immediate successors would rule over the “Middle Empire,” a period of consolidation, greater contact with Europe, and a refocusing of Khitan diplomatic and territorial objectives. Though, most of all, the Middle Empire represents a period of great religious strife.

Chapter 18: The Pale Khitan, Pt. I - The Fifth Crusade

Chapter Text

Moshan, known already as the “Pale Khitan,” was successor to Weizu. And he made controversial decisions from his first days, a feature his reign would come to be known for. When he chose the Temple Name for his father, he very consciously selected the exact same format as that of Agdji I, so that Diluguin would be the “Martial Progenitor” while Agdji I was the “Great Martial Progenitor.”

Temple Names in the Middle Kingdom were important things, but nowhere near so important--nor so literal--as they became among the Liao. A debauched drunkard could easily be named the Temperate Ancestor in China, as long as his heir was fond of him and wished to efface his perceived failings. The Khitan tended to prefer providing Temple Names which were true to the nature of the lords who held them, which was not in itself troublesome, until the Khitan experienced a sequence of rulers whose defining characteristics were all similar.

Temple Names were highly formulaic, and there were a set number of acceptable formats. All three Emperors in the west had possessed a Temple Name centered around warfare--Wei--and even factoring the arch-prestigious and highly unusual form of Daweizu (which utilized three characters, whereas Temple Names were traditionally restricted to two) the Khitan were now out of means to refer to their rulers as warriors. Though the focus on the martial natures of Agdji I, Agdji II, and Diluguin were true to their natures, now no future Khitan Emperor could ever receive a name respecting their martial prowess, for Temple Names could not repeat within Dynasties. Worse still, by tradition in death these Emperors were only to be referred to by these names. Diluguin's honorific, Weizu, sounded highly similar to Agdji I's Daweizu, and both sounded passingly similar to Agdji II's Weizong--especially to foreign courts.

Moshan’s decision, unintended or not, would begin to cause problems with utilizing only Temple Names to refer to previous rulers, and thereby would come to influence Khitan naming conventions significantly. As the first three Emperors would continue to be confused with one another, eventually rulers of the Middle Empire period would finally bow to pressure and adopt the European system of ruler numerology: though most often they would still give their rulers Temple Names, they would no longer refer to them solely by these honorary titles.

This was to be only one of the myriad changes among the Khitan which Moshan begot. Although he adored his father and came to the throne deeply depressed by his loss, Moshan did not respect many other Khitan; he knew they considered him a stunted abomination which did not hold the features of the east, and only elected him because of his father’s political strength.

But Moshan had a plan, or at least the idea of a plan, in place, as well as the blessing of his father, the only man whose injunction could have ever stopped him. The Khitan had not yet changed as they must, but had only pretended at change; Moshan would give them the change they must have. He would either be reviled for as long as any Khitan drew breath, or he would save the Khitan from themselves.

Throughout his life, as with most rulers, Moshan would have many confidants: friends would pass away and new ones would be born; advisors would inherit lands which would take them from court while fresh second sons would ride to Huangjin Zhongxin to take their place in the hopes of earning Imperial favor; and those who were once friends would sometimes become rivals. Like most noble men at the time, one of the few constants of his life was family.

The two women closest to Moshan throughout his early reign were his mother, the lowborn Lietuvai woman Milda, and his wife, Siaugu. Yet Milda had less than no political power in the Jin Khidan Zhou; after Diluguin’s reforms restricting the rights of the nobility to vote on the inheritors of the Mandate of Heaven, no Lithuanians could vote in the moot, and Milda was not even a noble among the Lietuvai. Siaugu, however, was a different story.

Moshan’s cousin twice-over on the patrilineal side, Siaugu being the granddaughter of Daweizu on both sides (her father was Daweizu’s son Ituk and her mother was Daweizu’s youngest daughter Suirgen), his wife had the great luck of being one of the only grandchildren of Agdji I to descend from him from both parents, which made marriage to her highly prestigious and greatly legitimized Moshan’s connection to his great-grandfather. She was also the foremost claimant to the Duchy of Belz occupied by Djoborin’s only son and heir Tabuyen. Finally, her mother Suirgen was one of only two of Daweizu’s children still alive at the time of Moshan’s ascent (and the other, Biaen the Beautiful, had recently been maimed in a duel and did not look likely to survive), and this afforded her additional socio-religious prestige and influence.

This speaks nothing of Siaugu as an individual, though here she left much to be desired. Hot-headed, jealous and deceitful: these were her defining characteristics. Siaugu knew exactly how much she was worth, and did not hold herself to the same standards she held others: she did as she wished, but demanded perfection from everyone else.

Yet this also overlooks something of Siaugu’s worth. She was so demanding because she WAS exceptional, and not just politically. Standing as a giant of height (though Khitans were slightly taller than the average European, Siaugu dwarfed even most Khitan men at over 185cm) and with an acute mind, she did stand apart, both physically and mentally. She spoke Khitan, the pidgin of the Middle Kingdom, Polish and Hungarian all fluently; she rode in contests with the men and was an adherent of the Berkutchi; she was skilled with numbers; and, whatever her other faults, she was punishingly diligent in her duties. And, though she was envious and cantankerous, once she had power she would do anything to protect it. However unlikely the bedfellows, Siaugu was fiercely supportive of Moshan, to protect her title as Huangho if nothing else.

Diluguin spoke often to Moshan about how Moshan’s mother had been his choice, but when the time came for Moshan to marry, he was not afforded a choice: it was Siaugu or nothing. Although Moshan had understood why his father insisted--his marriage to her, as well as the birth of his son Diluguin, was one of the only things which caused the moot to support his election--he had initially rued being denied his own choice. Yet, over time, despite the significant differences in their personalities, Moshan and Siaugu had come to tolerate and even respect one another, after a fashion. Moshan never stopped quipping that he was a midget married to a mountain, but neither did Siaugu hesitate to point out that he often availed himself of climbing it.

Moshan’s immediate rivals, if there were any, were his brothers: his full-blooded brothers Agdji and Abo, and his half-brother Aerlu’or. Although all were children, Diluguin’s victory in the Gambit and the downfall of Djoborin had established clearly that only legal successors to both the Liao and the Qin through relation to both Agdji II and the Lady Huei would be considered acceptable successors to the throne, and this left precious few Yaerud for consideration: Moshan’s brothers, as well as his cousins Udu’on (son of Diluguin’s brother Saradin), Qutug II (son of Qutug I of Trakai), and his uncle Dorhan were the only legitimate claimants--if one discounted Tabuyen son of Djoborin, born to Agdji II’s daughter Qadju. But Tabuyen was a child, son of a disgraced and rebel father with only a matrilineal claim to the Qin; for the moment, the scion of Djoborin had no support.

Due to Weizu’s great prestige and popular rule, if possible the nobility would undoubtedly attempt to ensure that a successor to Diluguin himself was placed on the throne, and that meant Moshan’s brothers. Although all of his brothers started his reign varying from cordial to worshipful of him, he knew that could easily change.

Agdji was the most fickle, being the closest to adulthood, but he was also the least impressive, and the court balked at a pale-skinned and weak man who bore the name of Agdji--they considered it insulting.

Abo was more concerning, as even at eight years old he was seen to have a sharp mind and strong body. Moreover, although he did like his “little” brother (Abo was already taller than him), much of that came from Moshan’s association with his father, and might well not last when the powerful Lord of Sandomierz, with his own vote in the moot, realized his own political power.

Finally was the youngest, Aerlu’or. Although under normal circ*mstances he would pose the greatest threat, being Moshan’s half-brother, the product of a holy union between Diluguin and Moshan’s sister Telgen, here the Huangdi was the least worried--Aerlu’or had become very friendly with him during their days together caring for Diluguin. Friendships could wane, but Moshan hoped this one did not.

In the earliest moments of his reign, as was so often the case upon the ascension of a new Emperor, Moshan’s greatest concern was the burial of his father. Distraught and listless, the new Huangdi was also forced to confront the grim reality of an Imperial treasury which, already sparse, had been divided between himself and his brothers as inheritance upon his father’s death, by Khitan custom.

To bury Weizu in anything but full splendor would be a great affront, and so Moshan immediately organized an ostentatious burial, ignoring all the costs. But this left him bankrupt within the first days of his reign, a problem no ruler had experienced since the ascension of Agdji II, and which had deeply damaged his reign due to the perception that he had to borrow from others to bury Agdji I.

“Why not ransom the prisoners your father took back to the Poles?” Siaugu asked the night of Diluguin’s death. “You promised to free them, but the Emperor’s needs come first. Ransom half to pay for your father’s burial and free the rest. It will show strength to break your word with no consequences, and honor to keep it in part.”

Moshan sighed. He did not agree with her, but he did not have the fortitude to argue, and in one thing, at least, she was correct--the Emperor’s needs came first, especially now.

“Do whatever you must,” he grunted; it sounded more like a squeak from his tiny body. “I will leave you in charge here while I travel to Galich for the burial. Make up the lost funds in my absence. Just don’t start a revolt.”

“I will keep it to the barons,” she replied mildly. “They can hate it all they wish, but they have no power to resist.”

The official record of Moshan’s reign was written by consummate propagandists: the bureaucrats and lower nobility who made up the majority of the Emperor’s court. In order to portray the Khitan as the proactive agents behind the events that were to come, these writers--many of them not knowing any better themselves--authoritatively declared that the infamous events of Moshan’s early reign began at Galich, during the burial of his father. In actuality, they began entirely more inauspiciously, in a meeting one sleepy night in the small village of Zarnow, south of Sandomierz.

With his father’s condition worsening and the 50th year of Khitan settlement (the date at which it was set that the Khitans must abolish concubinage) rapidly approaching, several months before Diluguin passed Moshan had requested the presence of his friend Urban IV at Huangjin Zhongxin--to negotiate with Diluguin about the terms of ending concubinage, it was hoped, but in the worst case to offer last rites. In the event, Diluguin passed before the Pope was even able to cross the Oder into Khitan-occupied Poland.

Although Urban did not arrive in time to speak with Diluguin, if anything the Papal delegation was more confident upon hearing the news, as Moshan was friendly with the Pope in a way that the polite but aloof prior Emperor had not been. Urban hoped to encourage Moshan to take part in the Fifth Crusade, for which he had been preaching ceaselessly ever since word of the destruction of the Golden Horde had reached the west in 1250, and was prepared to offer concessions related to the terms of the Conclave of Galich in exchange for a pledge of Khitan participation.

Upon receiving word that Diluguin had passed, Urban sent a runner to Moshan informing him that he would wait for him on the road to Galich. On the night of the 18th of June Moshan’s escort arrived at Zarnow, where the Pope’s retinue was staying, and what was perhaps the second-most important meeting in Khitan history took place.

Moshan’s group arrived at Zarnow in the early evening, after supper but with the long light of the solstice still shining in the heavens. After perfunctorily introducing Shulu Baisha-an and Abo, Moshan’s brother (both of whom had ridden part of the way with Moshan’s party and the body of Diluguin en route to Galich), the Huangdi begged a private audience with the Pontifex Maximus. The village headman offered his own house, and soon the two were ensconced in comfortable chairs before a small fire, built up for light more than heat on that warm evening.

“I am sorry that I did not arrive in time to see your father to his rest,” the Pope began, slowly drinking of a chalice of honeyed wine which seemed to glow auburn with the reflected light of the westering sun. “My mind has turned to your realm often since the days of the Conference, and I had hoped to see him again before his passage. But he was a great man, and surely his reward for his zealous defense of Europe is bliss in Heaven.”

Moshan winced involuntarily, though Urban did not notice it. “The fault was not yours, Holy Father,” he murmured softly. “My father was strong, but not strong enough to bear the ravages which his body suffered. That he lived as long as he did… I did not wish to believe it during those days of false hope, but it is miraculous enough. Yet he died following months of pain, and I mourn that he suffered.”

The Pope sighed, and nodded his head in agreement. “The ways of God are not easily discerned, even for we who love him. Was your father’s suffering the result of some sin, to be paid before his mighty soul was granted entrance to paradise? Or was it instead the price of even greater glory above? These answers are rarely evident.”

“With respect, Holy Father,” Moshan began, swallowing down the bile that threatened to overwhelm his voice, “I believe I do know the answer.”

“I do not know when it began. For all that I sit here now, soon to be enthroned as Huangdi of the Khitan and Lord Liao, until my father took the throne I was isolated and hidden away, especially from my ancestors. I never was able to speak to any of the companions of Agdji I in life, nor have I gleaned any truth from the bureaucrats of the court into these matters.

“Did we arrive from the east as barbarians and heathens? I cannot answer that, although what little evidence there is suggests that we did not. Certainly it is true that we believe in Jesus now, after our fashion. But I can tell you that, for the past fifty years, we have lived as something perhaps worse than heathens: we are heretics, true heretics, within the heart of Europe.”

And so Moshan finally broke the silence of the Khitan. The stunned Pope Urban listened without a word as the little Emperor told him everything--the marriage of Agdji II to his daughter Cheu’en; the usage of the concubinage clause to hide kin-marriages from western observers; the preaching of the Khitan clergy to maintain the pure blood of the east through sacral incest and the misleading of the Khitan peasantry; the almost total support among the Khitan nobility for kin-marriage. Hardest of all, through choking sobs, Moshan admitted that his own father had married his daughter, Moshan’s sister Telgen, and sired a boy on her, Moshan’s half-brother and nephew, Aelu’or of Konigsberg.

Moshan’s voice was hoarse, his face pale and eyes moist when he finally concluded. The western horizon was dyed burgundy with the sunset, and the little Emperor’s face was cast with shadows from the blood-red light.

“That, I think,” he said finally, “is why my father suffered. And that, I think, is why many Khitan will yet suffer more.”

The Pope massaged his forehead in exhaustion. He had traveled to the Jin Khidan Zhou--what he thought was a pious and friendly state, if somewhat strange in its customs and not Catholic in its leanings--to offer comfort and counsel to a friend, as well as to preach in the name of the Crusade. He had not anticipated learning about one of the greatest threats to ever face Christianity. He sighed.

“What you have admitted is a heresy which extends throughout the entirety of your people, and which threatens the entirety of Christianity. You show humble piety and fidelity to your Christian brothers to admit this, but what is to be done now? The Khitan are in breach of the Conclave of Galich--”

“Respectfully, Holy Father,” Moshan interjected, “that is not the case. I have checked both the Khitan and Latin copies of the terms of the Conclave, and both state that the Khitan marry within their kin-groups. We never broke with the terms of the Conclave; the Conclave itself is in error.”

A deafening silence reigned. The Pope’s eyes bulged, and Moshan’s face was downcast. “How could such a thing be!” Urban cried.

“I do not know,” Moshan admitted. “I have only suspicions. When Ago son of Agdji died nigh ten years ago, we lost the last of Agdji’s sons who had been an adult during the Conclave of Galich. I was only seventeen when Ago died, and far from favor with the court. I never spoke to or even met my grandfather Agdji II, great-uncle Ago, or even my grandmother the Lady Huei. If any Khitan nobles would have known the truth of what occurred, they would have. But by the time my father gave me the privilege of showing my face in Huangjin Zhongxin, all were dead. And Weizu never asked himself; he did not care about the past as I do; his mind was focused upon the future.

“I think it likely that some member of the Khitan court intentionally misled the representatives of Gregorius VIII about what kin-groups referred to. But if you ask who specifically, I do not know.”

“This is disastrous,” the Pope moaned. “Would that the Khitan had broken with the terms of the Conclave! If they had, at least through their repentance it might have been saved. But if the Conclave was agreed upon in ill faith, then it cannot be resurrected; we cannot maintain communion with unrepentant heretics who gained our grace through lies.

“And this speaks nothing of the Conference of Prague!” the Pope said suddenly, turning sharply in his chair to face Moshan. “The entirety of Poland sits now occupied by Khitans who never would have been granted this land had we known the truth two years ago. Lies served you then, and it was not in your conscience to be truthful. Why speak the truth now?”

“For the sake of my people, for the Poles whose land we occupy. For my father, for myself, for the Liao,” Moshan replied hollowly. “We cannot go on like this; we cannot continue to lie, to break faith with those who should be our brothers. It is sinful, base, and nigg*rdly to flaunt the terms we agreed to in order to live in these lands. Though the incest which my predecessors practiced may not have been in violation of the letter of the Conclave, they knew well that it was wrong, and they hid it in their shame--but they did it anyway

“We made an agreement with Christendom as a whole: to shield her and unite her in exchange for the grace of joining her. We have paid the first half of the agreement, but we are in arrears on the latter, and as time passes I realize that the agreement that we made with Christianity has been twisted. The Khitan see an agreement with Europe, not with Christ. But the agreement was made through Christ, and obeisance to His will is paramount.

“I want to do the only thing which I can to save my people. Holy Father, I must cast aside the faith of my ancestors.”

But Urban shook his head. “It is beyond me to offer you succor,” he replied. “Even if you are not guilty yourself--beyond your prior refusal to speak the truth, at least--your people live in sin, and you are the inheritor of the sin of the previous Emperors of your house. My heart would soar to welcome the Khitan to Catholicism, and to begin the process of unifying Christianity in truth, but it cannot be so. You must first atone, for yourself and your people.”

“What do you wish for me to do?” Moshan asked bluntly.

“The Fifth Crusade musters,” Urban replied, equally blunt. “In less than two months the first ships will set sail for Jerusalem, to return control of that holy city to Christendom from the Mohammedans. If you truly do wish absolution, you will be among those to pledge themselves to the journey. Your sins will be cleansed in the holy conflict, and should you survive the journey I will crown you myself as the ruler of your people in Christ.”

“We do not have the ships--” Moshan began, but Urban held up his hand for silence.

“I wished to preach for the Crusade while here even before I learned of your sins. I have anticipated your qualms, and I have already earned the agreement of the Hanseatic League to provide vessels for your troops. The Vatican will pay their cost.”

The sun had long since set, and the house was dark save for the dim light of the fire before them. In the half-light of the hot embers, Moshan nodded. “You will have the best soldiers in the world for your Crusade. But you will give the eulogy for my father--this I demand. He was the best of men, trapped by his circ*mstances, and he already paid for his sins. He must be sped on his path.”

Urban nodded graciously, and so it was: Moshan committed himself to Catholicism, and to the Fifth Crusade.

The funeral procession reached the town of Dolina on the outskirts of the Mausoleum of the Ten-Thousand on the 20th of June, at the peak of the solstice. The sun rode high for much of the day and well into the night, and the heat was blistering; despite wishing to wait longer to allow more Khitan to arrive to guide Diluguin on his way, the long days and great heat had begun to cause the body, which had already been rotting in life, to fester. Therefore on the 21st the final leg of the procession, from Dolina to the gates of the Mausoleum, was begun--Diluguin would be buried early in the morning on the 22nd.

As the towering edifice of the monument rose before them, looking for all the world like a great fortress rather than a tomb, Urban’s breath was taken away. It took seeing the Mausoleum for the Pope to realize exactly how much the Khitans revered their Emperors. For the first time, Urban understood the gravity of what Moshan was about to do in attempting to turn the course of a people for whom the will of the prior Emperors held sway even in death. Suddenly, Moshan’s recalcitrance made sense; it was not possible to achieve such a thing without a great deal of sacrifice.

Humbled and now fearful for his friend and the Khitan people, Urban gave the eulogy for the passing of the old Emperor as promised. He was completely respectful, emphasizing the old Emperor’s patience, martial prowess, and conciliatory nature toward the ‘rest’ of Christianity.

“However he is known, be it Diluguin to us in the west or Weizu Huangdi to his own people, the august Emperor fulfilled the promise of his ancestors: he shielded Europe from destruction at the hands of a cruel and violent foe, and did so in the name of Christ. Whatever failings a man might have, to save the entirety of Christendom is enough and more for them to be forgiven; may God remit his sins, and have mercy upon His children for the loss of so great a man.”

All that remained was to bury Diluguin, and for Moshan to transit the spears himself in order that he might be named Huangdi in truth. Yet for Moshan especially, this was a difficult prospect.

Even frail as the body of his father was after two years of struggling for his life--not to mention missing half a leg--Diluguin was still a full-grown man, while Moshan was a dwarf. By the tradition of the Jin Khidan Zhou, the Emperor’s successor was to bear the weight of the front of the deceased Emperor’s bier, while either the new Emperor’s expected successor--or, if there was no clearly-anticipated heir, the deceased Emperor’s eldest remaining son--was to bear the rear. This meant that Moshan’s brother Agdji, a weak and sickly child, was the only support he would have while trying to carry the full weight of his father’s corpse.

The experience was humiliating for Moshan, though it would have been even more humiliating had he refused his obligation to carry his father to his rest. Gasping for air between choking sobs, the new Emperor had to struggle to hold the stretcher bearing his father’s corpse high above his head to keep it level. He almost fell many times, and only through a supreme struggle of will was able to transit the entire row of spears--it took almost a full twenty minutes, where a normal transit took but five, and at the end the new Emperor was covered in sweat, his arms visibly shaking from the strain.

Moshan was not tall enough to place the body of his father in his sarcophagus, and this was left to Agdji alone in his place. Instead, still wheezing and gasping, Moshan panted out his first dictate as Emperor.

“There will be no electoral moot,” he gasped. “The Pope has requested Khitan spears for the Crusade, and the whole of my focus now is upon serving Christ; I return to Huangjin Zhongxin this very day to prepare the army. Should I fall, the electors may choose whom they wish to succeed me.”

Tired and still shaking from his exertion, Moshan quietly walked down the fifth row of spears--his row--while his stunned vassals stood stock-still, shocked into silence.

Moshan was exhausted following the burial, physically and emotionally, and rode back only slowly. When he arrived over a month later he was greeted by his wife, whom he had not seen in some six weeks--she had begun to show that she was pregnant with their second child.

She spoke no word of rebuke to him, and soon Moshan was enveloped in his work, preparing to levy the armies of the Jin Khidan Zhou to march down to the northern coast of the Black Sea where the Hanseatic fleet would meet them.

But it was not long before Siaugu could no longer contain herself. “Did you know that your sister Telgen is pregnant?” she asked suddenly.

Moshan blinked in surprise, setting down his quill. “With Weizu’s child?” he asked incredulously. “I was with him all but every hour of his final days, and he was in no condition…”

“She claims it is his,” his wife interrupted. “Whether or not it’s true matters little. I approve of you going on the Crusade; it will build ties with the Catholics, and it will show the court that you are strong. But you should not have dismissed the moot. If Telgen’s child is a daughter, she will be able to boast a full-blood brother and sister of Weizu. Whether the new child is really his or not, it will be a threat to the succession. You should have used your authority to ensure Diluguin was selected as your successor.”

“I appreciate your approval,” Moshan said absently as he picked his quill back up, “but you should know that no moot would ever elect a child of four. Nor would they elect any of my brothers--too young or too embarrassing all--and uncle Dorhan is a madman. I dissolved the moot in order to give the court the illusion that they have more power than they really do. The only possible choice of successor they have is one of Ago’s descendants as a Lord Regent, however, and I knew this already.”

He stole a glance at his wife, whose brow was co*cked inquisitively. “Have a bit of faith in me,” he smiled.

Moshan’s analysis of the political situation within the Jin Khidan Zhou proved insightful indeed. His vassals respected him as the son of Diluguin, but for that only; they still looked on him largely with open disdain for his dwarfism and bookish nature, despite his participation in the campaign that destroyed the Golden Horde. Had he attempted to press for political concessions from a vassalage which had already been subjected to a significant loss of authority during his father’s reign, they would have balked.

Instead the dissolution of the moot with the understanding that the vassals were free to select Moshan’s successor without interference from the Emperor encouraged them--they saw the Moshan as being more interested in foreign than domestic diplomacy, empowering them at his expense. They selected Ago’s son Qutugin as Lord Regent in the event that Moshan died on Crusade, but otherwise enthusiastically supported the venture as one which kept the Emperor’s eyes off of their activities, and simultaneously bolstered Khitan prestige abroad.

With this support Moshan was able to levy almost ten-thousand soldiers for use in the campaign, and in early September the young Emperor kissed his wife farewell, marching with the rapidly-coalescing levies to reach the coast of Yedisan, the territory where Agdji I had only fifty years prior eradicated the tribe of Tunga Tatran. It was there that the armies would embark for Jerusalem, where fighting had already been taking place for some weeks.

The Hanseatic fleet finally arrived in late December, and by January 1st the army was en route to the Hellespont. But before that, on the 27th, Moshan’s second son Chalan was born, named by Siaugu in the Emperor’s absence. These events--the birth of Chalan and the embarkation for Jerusalem--would both be altered in the official record to take place on December 25th, as a propagandistic sign of Christ’s goodwill.

As the Hanseatic fleet turned south toward the Hellespont and the battles of the Holy Land, it was soon met with a surprise. While stopping briefly at the fortified city of Chrysopolis on the eastern coast of the Hellespont to resupply with fresh water (Basilissa Marina Komnenos was not best-pleased that the Khitans were committing themselves to a military expedition in the name of Catholicism, and Moshan judged it wise not to dock in Constantinople) they found there a band of some 600 men who wished to join the expedition, led by Maurikios Komnenos, son of the deposed old Emperor Andronikos and nephew to the ruling Empress!

Maurikios had marked the Hanseatic fleet sailing north over a week past, and although he claimed to be isolated from the Imperial court, he judged that the only Christian power other than the Roman Empire itself which might operate out of the Black Sea were the Khitans, and correctly surmised that Moshan had committed himself to the Crusade. In the name of the spirit of Christian cooperation which Agdji II had propagated over twenty years earlier, Maurikios claimed that he wished to fight at the sides of his Christian brothers for the benefit of all Christendom.

But, complicating the affair, Maurikios insisted that he was being pursued by the forces of Marina who were attempting to jail him, and urged that the Khitans should take his men into their service and set sail as soon as possible. Moshan was not interested in becoming involved in the internal disputes of the Empire, especially not when its ruler, traditionally a Khitan ally, was already cool to the Jin Khidan Zhou, and would soon turn entirely sour when his conversion was made public knowledge. Moshan instead insisted upon an audience before accepting Maurikios’s offer of service.

Moshan’s quarters were modest, just a small room on an overcrowded cog with space enough for a cot and rickety table. It was in this unostentatious environment that Maurikios met with the Emperor, who sat quietly, his legs slowly swinging back and forth above the deck. For the world he looked like a child play-acting, yet he was the same age as the Prince, and invested with the greater authority.

The quarters were cramped with Moshan, one of his Imperial Guard, Maurikios and Maurikios’s translator all present; the Prince could do little more than bow his head respectfully. “Moshan Huangdi,” he intoned as he bent forward.

The shorter man smirked good-naturedly. “Do you know any more of our tongue?”

Maurikios’s man translated for him, and as he finished the Prince flushed. Before he could reply, Moshan held up a hand to forestall him. “I did not expect you to. It is a difficult tongue for foreigners to learn. Let us forego flattering one another. Why are you here, and what do you hope to accomplish?”

Maurikios made no delay, but spoke clearly and with confidence. “My father Andronikos was deposed for his failure to restore Italia to the Empire and his defeat in the Isma’ili Jihad. It was sinful to fight other free Christians; my father deserved to lose his throne. But my aunt Marina is destroying the Empire more effectively than he ever could have. Our armies in Anatolia are in full retreat while Marina has spent most of the last decade locked in the Imperial Palace in Constantinople, trading court positions for her… favors. She has estranged Your Grace, and denied the Empire a place at the Conference of Prague, willingly abandoning our obligation to the rest of Christianity for no purpose, all while ruling as a tyrant. Despite being in the midst of a civil war, she has assigned the Imperial Guard to bring me to Constantinople; I can only imagine I am to be blinded as a threat. I wish to leave while I may, to serve a greater purpose.”

“Why choose us?” Moshan asked idly.

Maurikios appeared confused, and Moshan clarified. “Even deposed, your father was not blinded. He is still a landholder in the Empire with significant support, is he not? You could serve your Empire by fighting your aunt from within rather than fleeing.”

“Romans should not kill Romans,” Maurikios insisted, “but strive to bring them back to faith and fealty. This was the lesson of Agdji II, your ancestor, whose words have inspired the Roman people. My father and I do not see eye to eye on this; he believes enough of the court supports him already, but they do not. My aunt must be stopped, but for so long as she continues to trade her body for loyalty, and for so long as the court is filled with sycophants and lechers who would bow to her bribery, there is no hope to depose her.

“I was blessed with the honor to bear witness to the burial of Agdji II in my youth. As I said, he inspired us all, and taught us a great lesson: if a figure can rise above strife and politics, they might unite even the most disparate peoples. Since that day I have viewed the Khitan as our closest allies and the means of our deliverance. You are a brave people who fight the most powerful and foul of all Christian foes. I wish to serve Christendom in your name, until the word of my deeds is too loud for any within the Empire to ignore.”

“You bore witness to the burial of Agdji II?” Moshan asked, surprised. When Maurikios nodded, Moshan shook his head. “I was not even permitted to be present at the funeral,” he said bitterly.

Maurikios appeared surprised and opened his mouth to reply as his translator spoke to him, but Moshan spoke before he had a chance. “Very well--you may come with us. But you will need to learn Khitan; I cannot teach ten-thousand men Greek in a few weeks.”

As it happened, Maurikios had only three weeks to learn Khitan before the fleet arrived in the Sea of Palestine, but he was diligent in his education and learned enough to communicate on a basic level. Yet he had not seen the Emperor since their first meeting, and did not understand why he was so insistent upon Maurikios learning their tongue; he had anticipated to lead his small group of Greek soldiers, not to need to communicate with the Khitan flanks.

The night of the 1st of February, with the fleet preparing to draw close to the coast, Moshan finally summoned Maurikios back to his cog and revealed his intent.

“I intend for you to command the army,” Moshan said softly.

Maurikios was sure that he misunderstood, his knowledge of Khitan being still very basic, yet when he glanced at his translator he saw that he was just as slack-jawed.

“Why? This is a Khitan army, and you are their Emperor!” Maurikios insisted.

“I am,” Moshan acknowledged, “and I will lead the right flank. But though the army loves me well--perhaps they are the only Khitans that do--I am still a dwarf. I have a tinny voice and small legs--no, do not attempt to deny it,” he croaked, holding up a little hand to forestall the fawning he saw coming. “It is embarrassing enough to live like this; it is worse to attempt to hide from it. I can neither see the whole field nor make myself heard to command my men. I know strategy; I learned at the feet of my father. But I am not a born commander. You may be--MUST be, if you truly intend to depose your aunt. Leading the flank of the Khitan Emperor will not make your name sing; leading the Emperor’s armies personally will.

“But there is a price,” Moshan said seriously, suddenly leaning forward in the uncomfortable wooden chair that was the only piece of furniture in the small room. “I can make your name sing, but if you wish the support of the Jin Khidan Zhou, it must sing in my key.”

And so Moshan told Maurikios everything: the perversion of Tengri beliefs, the breaking of the Conclave of Galich, the meeting of the Pope and Emperor at the hamlet of Zarnow, and the promise of conversion and participation in the Crusade in exchange for saving the Khitan people from their great mistake. It was a tremendous show of trust, one that no Emperor before Moshan--and perhaps none since--would have made in his place.

“I tell you this in confidence,” Moshan said when he finished, “but also out of respect. I will be asking you to do a great and dangerous thing: if you wish Khitan support, you must convert with me. Even though the Conclave of Galich is broken, I will adhere to the wishes of the founder of the Jin Khidan Zhou, Agdji the Great: we must unite Christendom. If the Khitans cannot be the bridge to that unity that he envisioned them as, then the unity must come at any means possible. The Roman state is the last free nation in the world to stand outside communion with the west, and though we love our friends there, the first who ever showed us succor, the time for disunity is at an end. If you swear that you will bring Catholicism to the Empire, I will train you for war, grant you great honors, and the army of the Jin Khidan Zhou will support your claim to the throne. This I swear.”

“Pope or Patriarch, it makes little difference to me; I have said before that I wish for unity foremost, as do many of my supporters. I have long since realized that without the support of our allies, the Empire cannot survive against the Mohammedan onslaught. If we survive this war,” Maurikios replied, “then I will convert. Only not before; if it is my fate to die in this Crusade, I will not betray the faith of my father before I do.”

“We are KHITAN!” Moshan replied harshly, so harshly that for the first time since Maurikios had met him, his voice took on some of the depth of a grown man. “Ours are the best soldiers in the world. You will not die, though the whole of the armies of Islam should stand against you.”

Maurikios did not believe that Moshan was being literal, yet on the morrow he would be rudely disabused.

Though Moshan could not have known, his armies landed in the fortified port of the town of Ascalon, on the coast due west from Jerusalem, the same day his sister Telgen gave birth to her boy, the ‘son of Diluguin,’ whom she also named Diluguin, no doubt to reaffirm his shaky parentage. Although blessedly not a girl (this would have meant that Aerlu’or of Konigsburg and his would-be sister could have entered into a holy union, which would have represented a great threat to Moshan’s authority among his Tengri vassals after he announced his conversion), it appeared as though the child might really have been the son of Diluguin--he was insane and physically disproportionate in his limbs, the first case of the ill effects of incest to be seen in the Khitan royal line.

At the time, though, home was the furthest thing from the Emperor’s mind. Although it was cool this time of year in Palestine the sun still seemed to burn down on the Emperor’s pale skin as he watched the dozens of Hanseatic cogs force their way into the harbor of Ascalon and unload their troops.

“This is insanity,” Maurikios said. That phrase, at least, he had learned quite well in the last week.

“Rumor from the Venetian fleet claims the largest Mohammedan army in Palestine is encamped outside of Ascalon, and preparing to drive north to wipe out our allies,” Moshan said for what must have been the tenth time. “We cannot allow our brothers to be threatened. The Muslims will come to Ascalon to defend the city, and when they do we have the fleet--we can retreat if we must, but they cannot; we will encircle them when the Papal army comes to relieve us. It will secure our victory.”

“It is INSANITY,” Maurikios insisted. “You are asking your men to seize control of a whole city while fighting an army twice their size! It cannot be done!”

Moshan snorted. “Our entire history is one of doing the impossible. This army has done it already, and will do it again many times before I die, God willing. Come with me and lead it, or get out of our way.”

Maurikios did follow after the little Emperor, though by the end he almost wished that he hadn’t.

The Battle of Ascalon was a month-long affair, and played host to some of the most brutal combat that the Khitan have ever seen, before or since--and that is a high bar to reach. Even the Imperial Army, hardened veterans all and among the best-trained soldiers in the world, were near to breaking by its conclusion.

The enemy commander was Amir Ankwaana of Da’mot, a loyalist to the Caliph and skilled commander, but also an Ethiopian from the southernmost provinces of the Isma’ili Caliphate; he had never even encountered rumors of Khitans before, unlike many of the northern Amirs. He underestimated them, to his peril.

The Khitan forces were able to capture Ascalon from its light garrison in just a few hours, but by that time Ankwaana had already been alerted and had turned his armies to invest the city. The Khitan forces were exhausted and not yet in full control of the walls; they were able to hold the gates against the assault for only a few hours before being forced to retreat and give over the eastern half of the city to Muslim forces, retaining control of only the western port districts. By this time it was only the 8th of February, and reinforcements were days away at best.

But this played into Moshan’s hand. Ascalon was once a Francophone city, but when Caliph Razin had seized the city several decades before he had expelled the local population and replaced it with Isma’ili loyalists, in order to ensure there would always be a loyal port with which to resupply Jerusalem in the event of an uprising. Instead of trapping the Khitan, this instead tied Ankwaana’s own hands; he was forced to either contemplate scorched earth tactics to burn out Moshan’s forces (who could always simply take to their ships even if the city burned around them) at the cost of the local Muslims, or undertake costly assaults while attempting to minimize collateral damage.

Either outcome would have served, but Ankwaana, in the opinion of the Khitan soldiers, showed a lack of resolve. He launched constant attacks against the port district in an effort to break them, but never resorted to the kinds of tactics--siege ladders to scale the port walls or flaming catapult shot to ignite the warehouses within, for example--which, while damaging the city, would have forced the Khitan to flee. Instead Maurikios kept the army bottled up in the fortified port and inflicted brutal casualties on Ankwaana’s troops, regularly trading five dead Mohammedans for every one Khitan lost.

Yet the battle could not continue this way in perpetuity, as both Maurikios and Moshan were well-aware. The Khitan soldiers were exhausted, often sleeping only a few hours a day as they were constantly awoken by fresh attacks from the numerically-superior enemy. Even if the men did not break, eventually they knew that even the timid Ankwaana would grow too frightful of being bottled-up and would resort to scorched-earth tactics despite his recalcitrance.

Moshan had sent a ship north to inform the armies of the Pope of the Khitan plan and beg aid over two weeks before. Just as hope began to fade, on the morning of the 1st of March the clatter of swords was heard: the armies of Christ had arrived and were assaulting the rear, relieving the Khitan. They had held the city, pinning the single largest Islamic army in the region, without support for over three weeks.

Now stuck between attackers outside the city and defenders within, Ankwaana realized too late that he was trapped. His army manned the walls, but the defenses had been damaged during his own siege and the Christian armies soon broke through. By the 2nd of March, a special force under the Knights of Santiago had reached the pier and set up a line of communication between the Khitans and the Papal armies.

By the 6th of March, it was over: not an enemy soldier still stood. Although it was impossible to determine how many the Khitans had killed during their three-week defense, conservative estimates suggest that at least 18,000 Muslims were slain, and perhaps thousands more--though, of course, at least 5,000 of this number were killed by the Papal forces who had come to relieve the Imperial Army. Either way, throughout the whole battle the Khitan had lost only 2,000 men, despite defending against an enemy force that was vastly superior in supply and manpower, even with the added difficulty of the hostile landing in the port during the opening phase of the battle. Although the Khitan army was malnourished, exhausted, filthy and battered by the end of it all--a hair’s breadth from breaking, in truth--they still won.

In one of his later memoirs, Moshan would write that “for all loyal servants and friends of the Khitan, there seems to always be a mythical battle on par with Jiket'i; that moment at which all doubt flees with the realization that the impossible, on the backs of Khitan men, is not impossible at all. For Maurikios Komnenos, Ascalon was his Jiket'i.”

The Imperial Army had respected Moshan ever since the Kinslayer's Gambit; while Diluguin had ruled he had been referred to as the Di Yi Taisi, the First Prince, and the army respected him even more as Emperor. Despite his deformity directly standing in the way of his ability to fight, the army was the one group of Khitan who looked at Moshan as a respected superior.

At Ascalon, they came to extend the same courtesy to Maurikios, who they viewed as having proved his mettle in the long and grueling conflict. Cheering and hollering, the army carried Maurikios on their shoulders, now hailing him as the ‘Da Taisi,’ the Great Prince, as they marched out to greet the Christian army which had relieved them.

Command over the Papal forces had been given over to Doge Zaccaria ‘the Monk,’ the famously pious ruler of the Republic of Ancona. Although technically vassal to the Kingdom of Lombardy, King Alfonso had been excommunicated out of a perceived failure to prevent his vassals from being corrupted to Islam (a fascinating and sad tale which soon enough would factor into Moshan's own), and therefore Zaccaria--who was as skilled in war as he was in theology--was given independent authority over the Italian forces participating in the campaign, including Urban IV’s own men, and it was he who received the battered Khitan army at the gates of Ascalon. Moshan rode at the fore on a small pony, with Maurikios at his side and a detachment of 100 soldiers of the Imperial Guard as an escort.

When the group arrived at the gates and dismounted, the Doge jumped down from his own horse and, signing the cross, cried in Latin “May God bless you for all time, and may He reward you eternally in Heaven for your holy deeds!” Before anyone could say anything, he lunged forward and embraced… Maurikios.

Maurikios could neither speak Latin nor the local tongue of Ancona, and could only blather helplessly in Greek. A frustrated Moshan exclaimed “I am the Emperor! He is Prince of Rome, son of Andronikos, commander of my armies!”

Zaccaria withdrew his arms from Maurikios and co*cked his head in confusion, looking between the bronzed son of Rome, the pale dwarven Khitan with his ruddy beard and sunburnt skin, and the myriad bronze-skinned soldiers of the Imperial Guard.

“Are all men of your royal house dwarves of pale skin? This son of Rome is darker than you.” Zaccaria asked incredulously.

Moshan’s frown turned into an absolute scowl, and he gnashed his teeth--he had spent a lifetime with his right to be a Khitan questioned. He would not permit some lackwit not even of his own blood to do the same. “I alone bear my height, and the skin of my mother” he said sourly. “I am Huangdi Yaerud Moshan, here by the will of Urbanus IV. It was I that saved your army, my strategy and my will alone.”

Perhaps it was Moshan’s height, or the haughty attitude with which he greeted Zaccaria, who did not understand the offense he gave the little Emperor. Perhaps--more likely--it was Maurikios, who, after the open hostility which his father Andronikos showed Catholicism in general and Italy in particular, titillated the Italians, who saw in him a figure whose conversion might end the Schism. Whatever the case, spitting in the face of their heroic sacrifice, Zaccaria ordered--ordered!--that the Khitan forces should remain in Ascalon to secure the surrounding area while they “rest[ed] and recover[ed].” Yet this did not stop him from openly inviting Maurikios to join his own forces, abandoning the Khitan army. The Da Taisi earned much respect for publicly refusing.

For the next several weeks, Moshan stewed in his anger. As much as he hated Zaccaria for his insults, the man was right--the army was not in a state to march. It loitered around Ascalon, resting and securing the area. But then, opportunity presented itself.

Zaccaria, in his arrogance, had believed that he could engage a fresh army from Egypt, and had ridden off without Khitan support in mid-April. Now, weeks later, his army was being soundly beaten and were in general retreat across the desert. Moshan did not delay.

Moshan recognized that the Muslims stereotyped the tactics of the Europeans, and did not realize that the Khitans historically fought much as they did, with a preference for horse-archers. Thus, at Moshan’s instruction Maurikios ordered the Khitan horse archers to break formation and sneak behind the enemy lines. When the Muslims reached the Khitan armies several hours later they were overconfident and committed the entirety of their forces, but soon found themselves facing the same tactics which they used to destroy Zaccaria: hit-and-run strikes from horse archers positioned behind the enemy. In a matter of a few days, Moshan decisively won a battle that had been raging for weeks.

Moshan was not an arrogant man, but neither was he self-effacing. He had spent his entire life being told he was not good enough, and whenever anyone so much as implied the same to him in the present, now that he wore the mantle of the Liao, he could be positively vindictive.

For his recklessness, failure to command, and “insult to the honor and integrity of the Emperor Moshan, who by God’s will saved and protected us in battle twice, yet whom was abused greatly by insult at the hands of this most crass man,” Zaccaria was all but unanimously stripped of his command in the aftermath of the Battle of Gaza. In his place Moshan was selected, who, despite Zaccaria’s initial dismissal as a novelty, had proven firsthand his skill and dedication.

Moshan rapidly organized the command of the Papal army, retaining overall control for himself and commanding the Khitan forces personally, but delegating command of the Papal forces and Italian allies to Maurikios. Within a day he had turned it southwest to El-Arish, where Muslim reinforcements were beginning to organize. But not before he gave his very specific orders to the already-humiliated Zaccaria.

“You will go to Ascalon,” Moshan told him, shouting so that all the nearby soldiers could hear. “You will secure the area; your men need rest, I do not doubt. Make sure the port is in readiness for my men to leave when we prove victorious.”

Ashamed and humiliated, Zaccaria--who had, before Moshan appeared, been favored by the Pope as the foremost commander of the Crusade and stood to gain the greatest monetary benefits from its victory--sped north with his men into exile. Swindled of his pride, piety and the spoils of the conflict, he swore hatred and vengeance upon Moshan underneath his breath. Moshan protected his honor that day and formalized himself and the Khitan as the leaders of the Crusade, yet he also made a foe of a pious man.

The Battle of Tukkot quickly ended, and the Khitan forces soon settled down to invest the fortifications at Arish in order to ensure that the southwestern passage into the Kingdom would be defended. Meanwhile, at the Emperor’s order the armies were divided, with Maurikios ordered to take the Papal group and begin the siege of Jerusalem.

“For,” Moshan told him, “there will be no hope in proving victorious unless the city of our desire is threatened; not until then will our enemies break. They will think us too weak to contest it, and only bring forth more men to push us back into the sea.”

Long since cleansed of his doubts about the Emperor’s skill, Maurikios obeyed his commands without question.

While Moshan was on campaign his wife Siaugu ruled as regent, and though her husband was in mortal danger, chief among her thoughts was protecting her own power base. The continued presence at court of Moshan’s half-sister Telgen, bride to Diluguin, was a direct threat to her authority, and the claims of her children threatened Moshan’s sons also.

Telgen had scarcely recovered from the birth of her second child before Siaugu had begun shopping her around as a potential bride, and by the end of May a match had already been arranged with Prince Ivar of Norway. A truly exceptional man with a kind heart and meek disposition, Siaugu did not insult Telgen with her choice of husband--yet nevertheless Telgen did not wish to leave the court, and her fury at so obviously being dismissed was great.

Yet Moshan’s pacifying moves towards the nobility had served him well, as had the idea that their Emperor went abroad to fight and win honor. Betraying him while he was on Crusade showing all of Christendom the power of the Khitans would have been unseemly, and although Telgen sought supporters to allow her to flee from the marriage, none would agree to take her in. Many would come to regret that they did not.

Most especially the bride's new husband, when he eventually discovered she had lain with her own father.

Although Moshan tried to live his life as a pious and noble man, he had not been raised to be particularly zealous. Even if he was an outcast among his own people, he had still grown up seeped in a culture which advocated for peaceful coexistence between a variety of Christian creeds, and this had only been internalized the more during his father’s rule, when Moshan was finally permitted to show himself before the court and take an active role in the state.

Indeed, while Moshan believed that the Tengrist belief was perverse and unseemly, this was the result of what he firmly believed was a corruption of the original intent of the theology, which was to serve as an interlocutor and bridge between the various Christian factions. His decision to convert to Catholicism was not made out of any great religious fervor, but a simple calculus: Tengrism was corrupted and unsalvageable, and Orthodoxy was a faith far too small to reunite the Church. If unity was the goal, unity under Rome was the only possible means.

The Fifth Crusade, called by some the Khitan’s Crusade, was the beginning of the end of this apathy on the part of the Emperor. Although he had at first been greatly insulted, after the dismissal of Doge Zaccaria, the rest of the Catholics in the Holy Land treated him with immense respect, deferring to his opinions and seeking his counsel for the most minor of matters. They did not seem to care that he was a dwarf, and some even looked on him approvingly as “good luck”--the furthest thing from how a Khitan would normally react, who saw a man who could not mount a horse as a dead weight. When a star shot through the sky above el-Arish, Moshan knew the truth in his heart: these were his true people. The Khitan had abandoned him, and in Catholicism alone could he find his home.

By the beginning of July el-Arish had fallen, but worrying reports of Islamic forces massing around Monreal led Moshan to recall Maurikios from the Papal army and to set up a defensive position in the hills to the southeast: if the Isma’ili sought to break through Monreal in order to launch a fresh offensive into the heart of the Holy Land, the Khitan force would be the only line of defense: Moshan ordered that the remaining armies of the Pope continue to besiege Jerusalem in the hopes of forcing the Caliph to accept his defeat.

Until then, the Khitan would simply have to hold.

It is rumored that the young Caliph recognized as early as mid-July that there was no hope of victory; too many of his armies had been smashed, and although as yet the Isma’ili did not understand the difference between the “pale Franks” and the “dark Franks,” rumor had at least reached Mecca, where Caliph Musa now had his seat, that there were strange new Franks who fought ‘Arab-fashion’ and who had all but single-handedly wiped out two of the great armies which the Caliph had sent to pacify the region. Although none had as yet connected these dark-skinned soldiers with the Khitan bogeymen of decades past, it was clear that they were a serious threat whatever they were, and Musa wished to end the war before it could result in even more bloodshed.

Yet the Caliph was still a minor, only fourteen years of age, and his Vizier did not believe as his liege; in the mind of Ahmed--none other than the prior Caliph, who had been deposed as an unpopular ruler but had found a way back to power by ruling in his own son’s stead--it would be humiliating and heretical to surrender, and victory had to be achieved at all costs.

A probing strike was launched against Monreal which soon spirited Ahmed out of political favor, for the Isma’ili army was nearly wiped out with barely any casualties suffered on the Khitan side for their trouble. Deeming these ‘bronze-skinned devils’ too dangerous to toy with, the Caliph overrode his father and demanded that peace be brokered with the Christians, so long as these new Franks would agree to leave the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

So it was that, on the 20th of August, the Fifth Crusade ended in victory for the Catholics. It was not a wholesale victory; the Emir of Acre, Qamhat de Blois--the Arabized grandson of Thibaud III, last King of Aegyptus--refused to cede his lands and began a campaign to retake Jerusalem which would take months to put down, and Doge Zaccaria, still infuriated about the usurpation of his authority by Moshan, would demand exclusive trading rights in the Red Sea from the port of Elim as compensation for his financial losses in the campaign. The debate over the port’s sovereignty would last years before the Pope himself would be forced to intervene and demand that Elim be turned over to Jerusalem.

But still: they had won.

Moshan was already a legend for his participation in his father’s campaign to defeat the Golden Horde, but his prestige only ballooned following his participation in the Crusade. Many nobles begged him to crown himself King of Jerusalem, or at least give over “a Khitan of your House half so skilled as you” to be King, yet he refused on the grounds that the title belonged to House d’Appiano, the historic Kings. This humble refusal only impressed the lords further, and though he refused all the titles proffered to him, Moshan was weighed down with heaps of gold, the spoils of the conflict; indeed, he received so much that there were uncountable chests even after he had paid Urban IV back for his financing of the Hanseatic fleet--another feat of piety sung far and wide, for Urban had never requested that Moshan repay the cost of the ships.

Maurikios, too, was feted; although he was not quite a legendary commander in the same way that Moshan had made himself into (although Maurikios formally commanded the Khitan army, it was well-known that Moshan was the strategist) he had still earned himself a reputation for flexibility. The Crusade had honed Maurikios’s natural skill with war, and more: it had made a name for him among the Catholic nobility as sympathetic to their faith.

Though the newly-crowned Gentile II begged the Khitan to stay long enough for a banquet, Moshan was not interested in dallying. Though he did delay in Ascalon for a few days in order to meet with the many lords who wished to congratulate him, the Emperor otherwise insisted upon leaving immediately.

It was that last night in the port that Moshan finally had an opportunity to speak with Maurikios in private.

“You survived,” Moshan noted as he stepped into the airy guest room of Maurikios’s occupied home, taken from some local notable or other.

“I have,” Maurikios agreed. He leaned lightly against the balustrade of the balcony; as Moshan stepped forward to stand beside him, Maurikios could not help but note that the dwarf’s head did not even reach the railing.

“I will go to Rome for my conversion,” Moshan said. “The Pope himself has offered to crown me. You would be most welcome to join me, and I do not doubt that Urban would issue what support he could to your cause.”

“That would only turn the nobility further against me,” Maurikios claimed. “But I will go even so. I gave my word, though I think it will be even more perilous to rule Rome as a Catholic than to participate in this Crusade.”

“You forget how dire matters were when we first took this city,” Moshan reminded him mildly. “But you need not worry about that for many years; the army has lost half its strength. There will be time for you to prepare further before you are asked to become Emperor.

“And to that end,” Moshan said, turning and gesturing for a guard to step forward, “I have brought this.”

On a simple pillow lay a mace, one which Maurikios immediately recognized: the mace of the last King of Jerusalem, Leonardo II, which had been given to Moshan as a gift in recognition of his service.

“I already have a weapon,” the Emperor said. “I do not need another. But you will--take it, as a token of my own promise. As you have fulfilled your oath to me, so I shall fulfill my oath in turn.”

Chapter 19: The Pale Khitan, Pt. II - The Great Polish Rising

Chapter Text

Word reached the Jin Khidan Zhou of the victorious Fifth Crusade and their Huangdi’s privileged position in ensuring its victory well in advance of Moshan’s own arrival; the Hellespont had not even been crossed yet on his return journey and word of the victory was already common news throughout the state.

Catholic nobles throughout Europe had seen the incredible skill of the Khitan army and its commander, and the word on every lip was how impressive Moshan was, and that the Pope had summoned him to Rome in person. Riding this wave of sudden popularity for their Emperor, Khitan nobles who would have mocked and insulted Moshan before Diluguin’s ascent, calling him ‘malformed’ as his uncle Djoborin had, now raised toasts to his honor and proclaimed him favored by Tengri. They insisted that Moshan was loved by all Khitan and held feasts and tourneys in his honor.

But Moshan saw through the façade. The nobility chose this moment to favor him because he had suddenly shown his worth on a stage where all Christendom was watching. They could not well mock him when all but the whole of Catholicism was singing his praises, not these vain and puerile children who craved attention and honor yet feared that their sinful secrets would be discovered. These little tokens of honor were like a game to them, a public way of telling Moshan that he had not been important until now--and would only remain so for so long as they could continue to feel self-important by using his name for their own benefit.

Moshan despised them. But soon they would be rudely awakened.

The Khitan army landed at Yedisan in late October, and from there was disbanded. Without the need to travel alongside an army Moshan was able to move quickly, and although he stopped for a week in Galich in order to spend time in prayer and contemplation at the grave of his father (Maurikios was with him, and was overawed to have free access to the Mausoleum) he soon turned home.

Just as he had in Jerusalem, he denied any request for him to stop and enjoy a feast of victory with local lords, instead insisting that he would soon host “the greatest celebrations this realm has ever seen.” On Christmas Day 1254, almost a year to the day from when Moshan first stepped foot on the ships that bore him down to the Holy Land, the Huangdi returned to Huangjin Zhongxin.

Although Moshan knew that his nobles hated him, that return to the city of his birth made him question whether the people of his country did. Khitans, Lithuanians, men of the Rus--they lined the roads for miles, throwing flowers before the feet of his pony, bowing and crying “Huangdi, Huangdi, true son of Diluguin!” It deeply shook Moshan’s persecution complex, and warmed him to the people he ruled.

And there, at the gates to the city prepared to welcome her husband back home, was the wife he had left behind, at that time six months pregnant: Siaugu. He had had no word of her or his second child by her, but she held a little toddler in her arms, a boy who strongly bore the features of the east.

Had Moshan dismounted, he would not have been able to reach the child high up in Siaugu’s arms. Instead, still in the saddle, he kissed his wife and gently caressed the face of the son he had not yet seen.

“He is one year old this day,” Siaugu lied.

“Truly?” Moshan replied, surprised.

“Whatever you have been called before, my child,” he said, “you were born on Christ’s day, harbinger of our victorious Crusade. You are Jiesu.”

Shortly after returning to Huangjin Zhongxin Moshan ordered that a great feast, complete with displays of artifacts and spoils from the victorious Crusade and with jousts put on by the surviving soldiers, was soon to be held in the capital. All the nobles of the realm were invited.

This set tongues to wagging, for many reasons. The Emperors of the Jin Khidan Zhou were not in the habit of idly throwing feasts; in line with the precedent established by Agdji I, even the more jovial and outgoing Emperors generally adopted a reserved demeanor when they were given the honor of being named Huangdi, oftentimes wrapping themselves up in the matters of court and bureaucracy and becoming effective hermits within the walls of Huangjin Zhongxin, only seeing the light of day to go off to war. In the over fifty years that the Khitans had been settled within what was once eastern Poland, but one feast had ever been organized by the Imperial House itself: the feast that had announced Agdji I’s Temple Name, held in the deep winter of 1223 to celebrate the Emperor’s eightieth birthday.

For just this reason, many Khitans saw the feast as an insult. Participating in the Crusade was fine and well, and earned the Khitans much wealth and honor, but it was seen in an almost mercenary manner; the nobility approved of it because it generated profit (in prestige and in gold), not because of the Christian brotherhood which had shaped Moshan’s intent. The idea that a feast for the entire realm should be held on behalf of a war which the Liao did not win entirely on their own seemed insultingly trivial to some, especially when Diluguin did not call a feast for his defeat of the Mongols, which the Khitan HAD achieved on their own, and, to their minds, at much greater risk. There was also the matter of a gross breach in protocol--Polish and Lithuanian nobility were among those invited. The very idea that they could be offered seats at the same tables as members of the Khitan nobility was, it seemed to many, in shockingly poor taste.

Nevertheless, Moshan pressed ahead with the feast, and many agreed to come despite misgivings--when the Agdji Huangdi called for the presence of his vassals at his table, it was a grave insult to decline. Although some of the more hidebound traditionalists, such as Purgyal Tsubartsan and Yaerud Cha of Kiev (son of Biaen the Beautiful, who had passed the prior summer) openly refused the summons, the majority were at the least determined to make the best of it, and many truly looked forward to the affair.

The festivities began in late January, while many of the nobles were still slowly trickling into the capital. Regular training exercises for the returned Imperial Army were modified into impromptu jousts, meant both to keep the army in fighting shape and amuse those nobles who had reached the capital early and whom would need to wait for the week of the feast to arrive.

The entire time Moshan cultivated the image of being good-natured and humble, lavishing his guests with gifts and giving the honor of personal attention to simple soldiers and the low nobility. While initially this was met with scorn by the Khitan high nobility, eventually--though the mockery never stopped--they came to accept that perhaps ‘the stunted emperor’ was simply compensating for having been hidden away most of his life, desperately searching for the attention of anyone who would deign to notice him. They mocked him, but they stopped being offended by his actions, or even paying close attention to them.

Yet despite the high nobility’s scorn, Moshan’s generosity and humility with the lower nobles, especially the Poles and Lithuanians whom had been most disadvantaged on the whole by the coming of the Khitans, seemed to earn him much respect and loyalty among their number.

It seemed as if all would go well.

And, for a while, things did. The feast opened on the 1st of February and was set to last for almost a month of revelry. The surviving soldiers of the Imperial Army--many veterans from the war with the Mongols seven years prior--were, by tradition, given pride of place as the warriors upon whose backs the Jin Khidan Zhou was built, and it was many of their war-spoils and tales which formed the basis of the entertainment for the event.

Moshan was well-represented in these tales, of course; sergeants of the Army spent much of the first day of the feast weaving a narrative of Moshan earning their trust through his participation in the Kinslayer's Gambit, and his superior strategic planning in the war with the Mongols. But more than Moshan, it was Maurikios who was especially feted.

The soldiers of the Army had called Maurikios the Da Taisi, or Great Prince, upon their victory in Ascalon. But shortly thereafter Maurikios earned a much nobler title. First given the night that he denied the offer of Zaccaria of Ancona to abandon the Khitan--an offer which, on its face, provided greater security and honor--the Army came to refer to him as ‘xuǎnzé de xiōngdì, róngyù de Qìdān.’

This is, of course, the speech of the Middle Kingdom, not the native Khitan tongue; many scholars have thereby assumed that this honorary title came from the lips of someone erudite--namely, Moshan--rather than the common soldiery. But whatever the origin was, the soldiers of the Imperial Army knew its meaning and took to it enthusiastically, in the future giving the honor of its address only rarely.

“Brother by Choice, Khitan by Honor.”

It is little surprise that Maurikios was the first to be so honored. Beyond simply being a member of the ruling dynasty of the Roman Empire (which the famous Khitan scholar Jotiai An once drily remarked were one of the only socio-political powers the Khitans ever encountered that they considered worthy of being bilateral, rather than multilateral, allies with), Maurikios in particular had a long and proven relationship with the Khitan. It was true that he had been present at the burial of Agdji II when Moshan himself had not been permitted to attend; similarly, it was well-known (and sometimes bitterly regretted) that it was Maurikios who, as a child, had spoken out against the Ecumenical Patriarch’s wishes to stop Lord Regent Ago from punishing the Gryfita of Poland for their execution of his daughter Uroen, and had successfully convinced his father Andronikos not to intervene. But most of all, he personally volunteered for and led the Imperial Army in Palestine at great personal risk, not just to himself, but to his family: he had left behind his wife, Mitze Gabras, and his young children Maria and Philetos in the Empire, vulnerable to his aunt Basilissa Marina, in order to serve Moshan to unknown ends.

Thankfully, all three were able to successfully escape from Bulgaria with the assistance of Andronikos, the deposed old Emperor, and make their way to the Jin Khidan Zhou. But Mitze was used to the southern Mediterranean, and though Huangjin Zhongxin was fascinating and foreign to her, it was also frigid cold in the winter; she developed homesickness, shortly thereafter followed by what most historians believe was early-onset gout. She had been in constant pain for months before Maurikios had returned, and he found her in ill health, suffering from lethargy and despondent. Such was his sorrowful repayment for his loyal service.

Yet, though Moshan wished no ill to Mitze, he could not deny that her expiry would prove greatly helpful to him.

Although Moshan rarely saw or communicated with them in any way, he did have sisters: his elder half-sister Telgen, who had now been shipped off to Norway, but also a younger and full-blooded sister, Baisbun. Baisbun and he did not get along particularly well: Moshan was bookish and reserved, a priest by cut forced into the role of a warrior, while Baisbun was fiery and playful, an alley cat forced to inhabit the body of a woman whom her tutors were trying--futilely--to beat humility and sewing into.

At the best of times Moshan had seen Baisbun only rarely, for they simply had little to say to one another. Yet she was still his full-blooded sister, and therefore a key political player for no other reason than that she shared his blood, and was coming to an age where she would soon be able to get with child.

As a member of the Imperial House she was, of course, to be at the feast. In the absence of Mitze (who complained that she was in far too much pain to dance and frolic), Moshan politely offered his younger sister to Maurikios as a companion to dance and converse with during the event.

Moshan had anticipated that Baisbun would rebel like the fierce creature she was, but she was actually greatly pleased by the arrangement, as Maurikios was much more tolerant of her aggressive nature than Moshan was, and she in turn was fascinated with the older man’s stories of war and battle, which Moshan was always reluctant to speak on.

Some weeks later Maurikios would request of Moshan that he be allowed to train Baisbun in the sword and take her on as a camp attendant, and Moshan agreed. It was plain to all, even Baisbun, that the Emperor hoped that they would marry.

Finally, as February neared its end, the feast began to wind down. Although the Emperor’s table was as generous as Moshan himself was and the tales, jousts, jesters and even the court historians had been more riveting than not, even joy becomes tiresome in too great a helping.

Moshan had made it a point to spend most of the feast with the Polish and Lithuanian nobility, as the reaction of the Khitans to his imminent conversion was, in his opinion, less predictable. Among the Poles he spent the most time with the lords who had lost land: Spytko z Kaszebe, lord of Kassubi, and Wratislaw Gryfita of Pomeralia, who had been permitted to retain a pittance of his titles as he was not of the royal branch of the dynasty. For the Lithuanians, Zygimantas gada Talava was the only member of their high nobility, and Moshan dedicated entire days of the feast to him alone: bordering Turov, Podlyashe and the Trakai, Zygimantas was in the position of a kingmaker.

All responded well, but the Polish lords--all of them, not just Spytko and Wratislaw--appeared nervous for much of the feast, and were eager to leave as soon as Moshan formally toasted the feast as closed and bade his vassals health and safety. They were gone on the morning of the 24th, and it was soon discovered why.

The Jin Khidan Zhou was torn asunder.

On February 26th, 1255, the Great Polish Uprising began.

Although there were small bands of partisans throughout the Jin Khidan Zhou, even in what was considered the ‘heartland’ (which was, at the best of times, only ever so much as 75% Khitan, and in isolated pockets were still majority-Polish), the rebellion was focused in central Poland, in those administrative regions which were culturally Polish but had been given over to Khitan rule as part of Diluguin’s punitive measures against the Poles following the Khitan occupation of Poland. Three distinct rebel armies were raised: one in Krakow, at the seat of Yaerud Tabuyen (not to be confused with Tabuyen of Galich; this one was the son of Yaerud Hedeng, Tqosi of Krakow); one at Kalisz, the ancient seat of the Gryfita, in the realm of Siau Uldjin; and one at Inowroclaw, the seat of Daerqa Kudji, the last Daerqa.

The Polish had picked their targets well, threatening Khitan access to the west and directly threatening the Daerqa in an attempt to force an immediate response from Huangjin Zhongxin before it could gather the fullness of its forces. This suggested they were led by a skilled strategist, and indeed they were. Dalimir z Tyniec was a young, brash lesser noble (some whispered he was actually the bastard son of the old King Branimir I) who had been dispossessed from his estates on the outskirts of Krakow during Diluguin’s reign and had been leading raids against the Khitans ever since. Now he openly declared himself King Dalimir I, demanding the loyalty of the Polish lords and openly calling for the invasion and re-occupation of eastern Poland, which the Conference of Prague had declared was eternally Khitan land.

Of course, it was obvious from the start that this was planned. The Polish nobility had been at the feast until but days before the affair, and could thereby argue ignorance to the plotting. They had also all disappeared as soon as they had ridden out from Huangjin Zhongxin, and although Moshan did not publicly brand them traitors in the somewhat vain hope that they might have a change of heart as a result of his recent kindness and repent their betrayal, it was very unlikely.

But their timing was good for more than just their own personal wellbeing. Moshan’s loyal vassals were also disorganized and in poor position due to the feast--many were all absent from their fiefs, still travelling on the long roads back to their homes, and thus neither centrally located at Huangjin Zhongxin where they could be of use, nor in their own lands where they could organize muster.

The Polish lords, by special dispensation of the Emperor, had not been called to join the Crusade, while Khitans throughout the realm had been mandated to do so. Although there was no immediate proof it seemed likely that many of the rebel armies were made up of trained Polish levy troops and outfitted with their gear, while the Khitan armies, although well-trained and well-equipped, had been gutted by the Crusade and had not even begun to recover. Moshan estimated he would see less than 6,000 troops, and although the news reaching Huangjin Zhongxin in those early days was sparse, it was known that 6,000 souls would not even account for the riotous rebels currently threatening the life of Daerqa Kudji in Inowroclaw.

Plock was the most centrally-located territory for Moshan to gather troops, equivalent in distance between Sandomierz, Belz, Volyn, Podlyashe, Trakai, Samogitia, and the crownlands of Huangjin Zhongxin proper: only Galich and Kiev were far distant from it. It was also, conveniently, directly adjacent to the Daerqa lands in Kujawy, which Moshan was willing to risk his entire force in order to relieve, to protect the life of the blood of Ituk.

Whether from overconfidence or simple stupidity, the army which was investing Inowroclaw split itself and immediately launched an assault on the levies organizing in Plock. Yet this went against their favor, as the levies of Shulu Baisha-an held the fords there and Imperial levies were reinforcing them with all speed. Unless Dalimir himself arrived, the Khitan might yet be able to overwhelm the slow Polish reinforcements.

Moshan arrived at the battlefield in the beginning of April, and soon learned that his suspicions were indeed correct: he was facing down Polish levies on the other side of the ford, well-equipped and clearly trained soldiers.

Yet however well-trained they were, they were not well-led. “King” Dalimir was nowhere to be seen (rumor had it he was still at Krakow), and it appeared that a succession of third sons, bastards and burghers were all trying to assume control of the local forces. As they continued to bicker and argue about which of them was best-fit to lead, thousands upon thousands of reinforcements were thrown into the various fords of the river Vistula in the vain hope that one pitiful strategy or another would prove successful and allow one of the petty lords to claim the right to lead. Instead, it simply meant that the Great Polish Uprising was left to die in the cradle.

Moshan, far from being an exceptional warrior due to his height, was so confident in victory by the time that he arrived that he openly fought at the front lines--the first time he had ever done so--and even scored a few kills. Although he lamented the death of fellow Christians, the news that the Huangdi himself was fighting openly could only serve to signify to the Poles that the Khitan were utterly confident in their victory, and that they should simply forfeit the field.

But they did not. In the end, when it was clear that there was nothing to do but rush forward and die without landing a blow, even the craven burghers charged with swords raised, crying for blood even as they were cut down by Khitan volleys, a hundred paces from ever reaching their lines.

“What did these barbarians think to accomplish?” Purgyal Tsubartsan sneered. He sat atop the back of a massive destrier three paces to Moshan’s left, in a privileged position as one of the leading contributors to the defense of the fords.

“Are you a warrior of experience, my lord?” Maurikios asked. He stood at Moshan’s right, on the exterior calmly surveying the field, but Moshan noticed a tightness around his mouth. His jaw was clenched.

“I am not, Da Taisi,” Tsubartsan replied respectfully, bowing slightly with his hand upon his breast. “I was too young to participate in the war against the Mongols. But I do not need to be to know that this,” he exclaimed, gesturing to the blood-choked river, “is not the manner in which troops are to be led.”

“You are correct,” Moshan croaked. “These men were ill-led. But I have a question of my own for you, kinsman, though it may seem unrelated: do you consider the Mongols a threat?”

“They are beneath us,” he snorted, “but they are certainly more of a threat than bodies lying in a river.”

“And that is where I am not so sure,” Moshan said softly. “In every battle we ever fought against the Mongols, all without fail, thousands retreated before us in terror. Do you see a single Polish man who ran from this fight, any who died with arrows in their backs?”

A pregnant silence set over Moshan and his companions, as well as the Imperial Guard that stood behind them. It was true--no force they had ever stood against had ever resisted to the last man without being physically barred from retreating.

“These men fought like caged beasts, and yet they were the aggressors. Only the greatest conviction can drive a man to throw away his life even after all hope is lost, and yet not a single man of them faltered.”

The victory at Plock shook Moshan more than if he had been defeated. At the beginning of the rebellion he had expected simple duplicity, a behavior which he had begun to internalize as something to be expected of all Poles. But the behavior of the Polish levies at Plock belied the sort of underhanded and cowardly tactics which Moshan associated with such a mindset. These men, even led as poorly as they had been, died in total confidence that their position was right. They faced death, looked it in the eye, and walked forward to meet it. Many, many times the Imperial Army had seen death in the same way--but they had never been asked to walk forward and die for their cause, for nothing more than the IDEA of what the Da Liao was, with no hope of victory. None had, maybe, since the Battle of Kashgar. Those early Khitan had had the honor to lay down their lives in the name of the Liao; however much he loved his army, Moshan did not think that a modern Khitan could do the same. He thought they would run just like the Mongols had run.

If the Great Polish Uprising had been nothing more than what Moshan first thought--an ill-conceived, abortive rebellion against the rule of the Liao--recovery would have been rapid. But in victory, Plock taught Moshan the brutal truth: however sanctioned it may have been by the Polish Counts and Dukes, this was not their rebellion. This was a cultural war between the Poles and the Khitans, the oppressed and the oppressor, where the Poles no longer saw any hope of coexistence, and death was preferable to continuing to live at the beck of Khitan lords.

If all had gone according to Moshan’s hopes, he would have been in Rome that summer, converting to Catholicism in truth. He would have been relying on his arch-Catholic subjects, the Poles, for support against his unpredictable Khitan vassals, who would no doubt seek redress for Moshan’s insult against the faith of his ancestors. But now these Poles, by means of their brave deaths, told him that they would never do as he wished.

Moshan could think of only one hope, and it lie with Dalimir. And so the army began its hard march south, to Krakow.

It was said that Dalimir had remained with his forces around Krakow in the hopes that he would be able to seize the ancient fortress, capture Yaerud Tabuyen, and gain a seat for himself from which he would be able to safely command the Polish uprising. Dalimir DID seize Krakow, and caused immense damage to the region in the process, as well as slaughtering thousands of Khitan and beginning a pogrom against them that extended into nearby counties. But Tabuyen was able to escape before the fortress was captured, and this left Dalimir frustratingly empty-handed.

It’s said that Dalimir had left Krakow after the fortress fell and rushed north in an attempt to save his army, only to realize that he had delayed far too long without sending instructions. Rumor had it that he rode to a ridge overlooking the fords of the Vistula almost as the final charge of the Polish levies took place, and he was able to witness with his own eyes their courageous but futile sacrifice.

But, like them, Dalimir did not retreat. He rushed east, attempting to hide from the Khitan--successfully--that he had come north. As Moshan rushed south to Krakow to end the rebellion, Dalimir rendezvoused with his remaining forces in Inowroclaw and desperately contributed to the siege, realizing that his only hope for victory lie in capturing a bargaining chip which the Emperor would trade anything to recover: Daerqa Kudji.

But, though Moshan was at first fooled, he soon discovered that the army at Krakow had retreated from that territory and left it emptied, and the few surviving local Khitan settlers insisted that they had heard from their neighbors that Dalimir had rushed north. It was not long before the Imperial Army was able to return to Inowroclaw, and shortly thereafter it was done. Hopelessly outnumbered, Dalimir’s men fought bravely, but like their kin at Plock were killed to the last. Dalimir the pretender-King alone was left alive, dragged to Sieradz in chains as proof that the rebellion was over.

“Until the 1950s, the Great Polish Uprising was not studied. Given Emperor Moshan I’s conversion and what followed thereafter, it seemed a minor footnote in Khitan scholarship.

“But, in 1957, the famous Marxist scholar Hans Heinrich Schmidt attempted to use the Great Polish Uprising as an example of early class struggle. According to his thesis, the Uprising was not to be understood as a function of either religious strife or a reaction to Diluguin I’s punitive restrictions on the Polish crown and nobility--the facile arguments which had preceded Schmidt’s analysis--but as a rebellion against the dominant Khitan economic class. Delving deeper into primary sources regarding early relations between the Khitan and Poles than anyone before him ever had, Schmidt was able to conclusively show that Poles of all walks, from nobility to peasantry, had occupied a deliberately less privileged socio-economic position than their Khitan equivalents from their earliest days. Going further, he showed that this deliberate economic exclusion had led to an oppositional relationship between the Poles and Khitans in their earliest years, and was even able to provide evidence penned by the hand of Moshan’s own scribes absolving the nobility of any involvement in the uprising, suggesting it was a grassroots peasant struggle.

“Ironically, Schmidt’s core argument of class struggle was almost immediately thrown to the wayside, even by his fellow Marxist scholars. But his research led to new and compelling questions. The previous narrative of early settlement had been that the Polish had welcomed the Khitans freeing them from Lithuanian domination to the east and the tyrannical grip of the Gryfita from the west. At worst, as this narrative would have it, the nobility were saddened by Diluguin I’s restrictions on their autonomy. But this had never sat well with the sources, and only the scholarly momentum of the pro-Khitan narrative had allowed academics to mentally gloss over the immense inconsistency that was a massive rebellion throughout Poland less than a year before the Poles would be called on to defend Khitan rule which they had just attempted to topple.

“Throughout the 1960s, suddenly the Great Polish Uprising became the heart of Khitan scholarship, with every student of early Khitan history struggling to piece together the contributing factors which led the Poles to a general anti-Khitan rebellion. And, more importantly: if the underlying anti-Khitan sentiment was so widespread as Schmidt’s sources suggested, why was the reversal so sudden?

“With the benefit of hindsight and objective examination of the sources, the causes of anti-Khitan feeling among the Polish underclasses is now easy to understand. Although there is always more to be said, the main contributing factors are well-known.

“When Daweizu arrived from the steppe and called the Conclave of Galich, the Poles were sold out by ‘other Christians,’ the beginning of a stab-in-the-back narrative. From there, during the conquest itself, the Khitan were not as munificent as their own narrative implies: fragmentary documentary evidence, as well as ample archeological finds, point to entire Polish towns wiped out by advancing Khitan forces in an anti-insurgency campaign. Finally, we discovered what Daweizu’s eldest son Aerlu’on had done in the invasion, and perhaps why he had been exiled--was it not a punishment, but an attempt to protect his life from reprisal?

“From the moment Huangjin Zhongxin was founded and the Liao began to exert influence over their new domains, the excesses against the Polish only grew worse. Daweizu himself famously attempted to enslave every Pole in the realm, as he did not believe that any but the Khitan should be able to exist ‘on the other side of the Mountain,’ the Khitan term referring to their prophesied homeland promised to them by their semi-mythical founder Yaerud Dashi. But even after Daweizu reneged on this, he and his heirs still authorized a series of extremely pro-Khitan statutes which placed local Polish populaces under threat: economic, social, religious and sexual.

“It is not clear that Daweizu or even Agdji II, inexperienced with settled rule as they were, understood the full consequences of all of their edicts, yet it IS clear that they must have at least known that many were unfavorable to the Poles.

“The first edict Daweizu ever promulgated denied to ‘any but those High Khitan who in their fealty abandon the traitors and arrive into this Golden State before the passage of their Huangdi to Heaven’ the right to hold any title. Whether intentional or not, this entirely abolished the ability of any Pole to ever hold a title, as at this time they could not become considered Khitan. A later edict that same month gave the ‘Lords of the Sky,’ the band of mercenary steppe warriors which Daweizu and Agdji II relied upon as an anti-partisan force and army of last resort, free reign to ‘requisition or access as needed anything which they might require in order to fulfill their duties,’ in effect providing carte blanche from Huangjin Zhongxin for the group to unleash a reign of terror and rape against unsuspecting Polish villages.

“These moves were ill-conceived, but they paled in comparison to the actions of Agdji II, whose paranoia about how few full-blooded Khitan there were in the Jin Khidan Zhou led him to exceed his father in all regards, pressing for Khitan favoritism at all turns in an effort to marginalize the state’s minorities and encourage a higher Khitan birth rate.

“Just a few examples of such edicts made by Agdji II include a doubling of tithe or tax (depending upon whether one was subject to a lord or a city council) which could be waived if one was a Khitan and subject to military service, but could not be waived by any Pole even though they were also obliged to serve in local garrisons; the forced closure of all Polish-led guilds and churches, the former of which were given over to total Khitan control (as it happens, at the time no craftsman could legally operate without belonging to a guild, and most of the newly Khitan-led guilds excluded Poles) and the latter of which were taken over by Khitan preachers who proselytized on the subject of sacral incest; a new legal code which abolished the death penalty for virtually all crimes against Khitans but introduced the death penalty as a crime for the ‘rape of any Khitan maiden [in this context, understood to mean fertile female, not virgin] by a member of any tribe but the Khitan.’ Coincidentally, if a Khitan man raped a woman of any ethnic group, the same legal code abolished any penalty for that man, but obligated the man to host the woman in his home if she got with child. This had the result of not merely trapping the victim with her abuser, but preventing any legal recourse to resist such excesses acted out on the minority groups of the Jin Khidan Zhou.

“Yet, most egregious of all was a decree which baldly attempted to restrict the movement of all of those who ‘do not bear the features of the east,’ possibly an attempt to hide the Khitan practice of sacral incest. Given the nature of the period and the frequent reports of mass exodus of Poles from the Khitan heartland to the Polish rump state in the west, it is unlikely that this measure saw any success. Yet that it was conceived of at all is almost unthinkable.

“After the death of Agdji II, the Poles might have been forgiven for thinking that they would soon have a better time of it, yet if so they were to be rudely disabused. The stab-in-the-back narrative was only deepened during the reign of Ago I, who received permission from the Pope and Patriarch to invade the Polish rump state, occupy it, execute its King and his young heir, and place a pliant ruler of his choice on the throne. Now the Poles had nowhere to run: both within the Jin Khidan Zhou and in their own Kingdom they were at the mercy of the Khitan, and although in Poland proper the Khitan yoke was yet light, of the tithes paid to their Kings as much as half went in the end to Huangjin Zhongxin, to fund the rule of the lords whom they despised.

“If the Poles, who had been so abused to this point, had been told that they would be free of this arrangement in just over a decade, they may well have jumped for joy. Yet this too would have been a false hope, for the ruler whom the Poles hated most of all came for them next: Diluguin I. After the Gryfita King Branimir II refused his vassal-pledge to assist Diluguin during the Mongol invasion, the Khitan Emperor planned his revenge. At the height of the early Jin Khidan Zhou’s pride and power, having just lain the Mongols low and with an Emperor on the throne said to rival the martial prowess of Daweizu, a conference was called. There, Diluguin completed the stab-in-the-back narrative by receiving sanction from the Pope and Holy Roman Emperor for the total occupation of Poland as punishment for the inaction of the Gryfita.

“The Gryfita were hated, to be sure, and the Polish nobility in the west, unlike the Poles in the heartland of the Jin Khidan Zhou, had little reason to hate the Khitan. Yet the attempt on Diluguin’s life which left him maimed and would eventually lead to his death precipitated a campaign of conquest which was brutal. Polish--and even some Khitan--records indicate that the Emperor was out of his mind at points during the campaign, and although histories dated from the rule of Moshan I insist that Weizu had attempted to curb the passions of his vassals and restrict them from killing any but enemy soldiers (and any members of the Gryfita dynasty, including spouses; this was no ‘clean’ war, even in intent), the Polish cleric Witosz of Kustrin claimed that the whole of central Poland ‘from Poznan to Krakow’ was devastated during the war, with many villages pillaged and burned in the fury of the Khitan.

“Of the actions of Diluguin following the conquest much has already been said and it does not bear repeating here, save to note that the eradication of the Kingdom of Poland, end of all Polish customs, privileges and laws, opening of central Poland to Khitan rule and settlement, and the direct hand of Huangjin Zhongxin and the Khitan bureaucracy ruling over them turned the nobility as well as the populace of Poland firmly against the Khitans. And, if they had not, the massive anti-Polish pogroms which began as soon as Diluguin began to slip in and out of consciousness, paralyzing the state and leading to an orgy of reprisal on the part of the Khitan, soon would. It was under these circ*mstances that the Polish people, as well as the remaining Polish nobility, became joined in their opinion that the Khitan were an abhorrent threat which could not be tolerated.

“Yet, though it does not excuse the actions of the Khitan, the narrative is not entirely so antagonistic as these deeds, robbed of their proper context and absent the olive-branches the Liao Dynasty regularly provided the Poles, might make it seem. Agdji II famously gave many thousands of Poles Khitan slaves, remnants from the realms of the eastern Irkin who fled west following the Mongol advance, but too late to avoid being branded traitors. Although this move was intended more as an insult to the Khitan than a gift to the Poles, the sight of Poles with Khitan slaves was a powerful motif, and there were still tens of thousands of these slaves belonging to just as many Polish families during Moshan’s reign.

“Similarly, when Ago invaded Poland to topple King Malowuj, he released all the nobles he encountered, only executed Malowuj and his son (unlike the later war against the Gryfita, Ago kept his men in line and collateral bloodshed to a minimum), and even swore to defend the Polish realm. Although the Poles often saw the tributary relationship as effective occupation, they were safer during that period than they ever had been before, with Huangjin Zhongxin sheltering them from outside threat. Their own Kings willingly chose to continue that relationship, seeing it as reciprocal, through the death of Branimir I and the passing of Ago, the Da Irkin.

“When Diluguin I came to the throne, he ended many of the ill practices which his father and grandfather had initiated, including formally allowing Polish and Lithuanian nobility (de facto this had been permitted even during Agdji II’s reign, but Diluguin formalized it), eradicating the doubled tithe and unequal legal codes of his father, and expelling the ‘Lords of the Sky.’ Although Diluguin would become the most despised ruler in the Polish popular consciousness, the beginning of his reign was seen as a ray of hope by Poles within the Jin Khidan Zhou.

“Moshan, too, began his reign in such a manner. Among his first acts included the freeing of many Polish prisoners which his father had taken during his reign, as well as the restoration of all Polish privileges which had been revoked by his father (although not the laws or customs with which they had been familiar). Indeed, Moshan never made an ill move against the Poles, save that he simply did not realize how far matters had spiraled. Isolated from power for much of his youth as he had been, preoccupied with war during much of his father's reign, and at Diluguin's bedside for most of infirmity, there was simply not a way for him to know. All indications suggest that the trips he made touring Poland during his father’s lifetime were meant to shore up Polish confidence that he would be a sympathetic ruler, but by that time any hope of cooperating with the Khitans was all but dead, and could only be recovered through careful, arduous cultivation. Rather than seeing Moshan’s waiver of the requirement to participate in the Fifth Crusade and his great feast following their victory as kindnesses by the Emperor, the Poles instead saw them as opportunities to stockpile arms and launch their great rebellion.

“All of this, now, we know. But the latter question remains: how was such deep-rooted animosity going back for over fifty years reversed so dramatically in less than one? Although one might be tempted to cite the Union of Galich as the self-evident answer, the war that preceded it, where the Poles fought loyally and with distinction, precludes that as a possibility. This, then, is the impossible question that this study will seek to answer--why did the Poles suddenly transfer their loyalty to the Liao, a Dynasty which heretofore had, in the main, sought to wipe out their political, cultural and religious autonomy?”

-Jotiai An, “Catholic Brotherhood: The Great Polish Uprising, Union of Galich, and the Politics of Cultural Identity in the Khitan Middle Empire,” 1985.

In the immediate aftermath of the uprising, Moshan was both exhausted and dispirited. Maurikios had proven his political acumen by realizing, just as Moshan had, that what had transpired represented a complete break between the Polish and the Khitan. While the Polish armies in the field may have been eradicated, armed and incensed Polish peasants were still rampaging throughout the Jin Khidan Zhou, particularly in Krakow, where rumors said that as much as 90% of the Khitan settlers had been wiped out. Khitan peasants were arming in turn, egged on by infuriated Khitan lords all over the state (especially Yaerud Moshar of Sieradz, uncle and Regent of Yaerud Tabuyen of Krakow, and Siau Uldjin of Wielkopolska, both of whom were terrified that their lives had been put at risk) and a counter-pogrom of immense proportions was brewing in the heartland. The situation already seemed unrecoverable, and matters only looked as if they would grow worse.

It was under these circ*mstances that Moshan did the only thing he could think to.

He called a martial tournament, and summoned the entire realm.

“Are you OUT OF YOUR MIND?” Siaugu screamed at him the night that he returned to Huangjin Zhongxin. “The Polish lords just tried to kill Daerqa Kudji, to kill the Siau, to kill me and your children, to kill YOU! They betrayed you just like they betrayed Weizu! They are base, craven and false, traitors and rebels, and you want to THROW THEM A PARTY?”

“I do not believe they were involved,” Moshan lied. “I--”

“Then you are either stupid or blind!” Siaugu screamed over him. Moshan blinked, his mouth slightly agape. He had never seen her this furious. “Those men were armed, were they not? Are the Polish garrisons not suspiciously short of men? Did the lords not vanish following the feast and only conveniently reappear three months later, with apologies that they could send no help?”

Perceptive.

“They were guilty, yes,” Moshan admitted.

“Then WHY?” she cried.

“Precisely because they are guilty,” he replied carefully. He had to be truthful, but not wholly so; Siaugu might see through lies, but she would not tolerate the full truth, either. “We cannot eradicate the Poles wholesale--we need them--but great bloodshed is on the horizon unless we can calm tensions. They have betrayed us yet again, and every time they have done so previously, the price has been grave. I intend to extend to them the possibility that I, as Huangdi, might declare that they were not involved, but only if they should provide certain concessions to me.”

“And what might those be, that would make the Great Lords tolerate such an obvious farce?” she snorted.

“That is my business,” Moshan closed the subject with finality. “I am still Emperor, and you are still a woman. This is men’s work, none of your own.”

Siaugu mustered all the distaste she could and sneered at her husband… but she did leave, and did not trouble him about his intent again.

Moshan circulated the intent of the tournament widely, but the messaging was entirely different depending upon which part of the Jin Khidan Zhou one was in. In the east, the intent was to “honor those Lords whom rose to the defense of their Huangdi, the Khitans who were murdered during the rebellion, and to bring the traitorous Polish Lords to justice.” Meanwhile, in Poland, the message was nowhere near as verbose: the Polish Lords were to come to Huangjin Zhongxin, unarmed. If they did, they would be spared and left empowered; if they did not, they would be wiped out.

And they came, as Moshan expected them to. Like the petty lesser lords and little burghers who had stared down death and overcome its fear before them, they came: Wratislaw of Pomerania, Spytko of Kassubi, Wladislaw of Lebus, Konrad II of Slask, and Lord Bishop Dytrych of Kustrin: all of the highest Polish nobility, and those who had betrayed Moshan six months prior, all arrived as he had demanded, with no guards or weapons. And he saw in their eyes, every one, that they did not believe a word he had said: they fully believed that he was going to kill them. And they were ready for it.

The Polish nobles were placed under guard by Moshan, but were not committed to the dungeons and were kept comfortably under house arrest. This was all done very openly, so that the assembled Khitan nobility could smugly gape at the confined Poles--but also quite explicitly so that the Khitans would see well that Moshan did not slay them outright nor abuse them, but treated them with respect. Many times he insisted that he intended to see justice, but that “the tournament is not the time for an inquisition” and that he would “not act without clear proof of what nobles were involved in the rebellion.”

The Khitan nobility was suspicious of this, but not so suspicious as to complain; Spytko of Kassubi’s garrison in Danzig had assisted the Khitan during the fighting--“most likely as it’s in pissing distance from the capital,” one gruff sergeant was heard to say--but even so, it lent some merit to the argument that not every single Polish lord might have been involved with the uprising. As long as those who were guilty were punished, they would tolerate the remainder walking free.

Indeed, this show of direct involvement on the part of Moshan, as well as his stroking of the Khitans’ egos by hosting a martial tournament specifically in their honor as the “great victors of the rebellion,” did much to salve their fury. Moshan permitted the Khitan to rampage throughout Krakow--the Poles there HAD behaved abhorrently, and there was nothing he could do to stop Khitan reprisals; by the end of it, the whole county would be a burning ruin--but everywhere else the nobility, feted and feasted, were willing to obey the Emperor’s order that they should have their peasants stand down, on the understanding that the Poles who were responsible would be punished. The massacre that had been brewing was avoided, narrowly. The nobles were even so puffed-up with pride that they were not deflated when Maurikios won third place, and a Lithuanian woodsman, of all people, won the championship!

The Polish Lords had been waiting in captivity for long enough that they had begun to believe that Moshan would keep his word, but in a twisted way: to leave them nominal rulers, yet permanent captives in Huangjin Zhongxin to be gawked over as examples of the supremacy of the Yaerud. If Moshan had been Diluguin, he would have done it--Agdji simply would have executed them.

But Moshan was not his great-grandfather, nor even his father, however much he adored him. And so, shortly after the conclusion of the tournament, as the chill autumn air had only just begun to descend on Huangjin Zhongxin, finally the Polish Lords were gathered together to meet with the Huangdi.

But, to their surprise, Moshan did not come alone: with him was Maurikios. And, most surprising of all, Dalimir!

The guards who escorted the Emperor in moved Dalimir to a cushioned seat by the window, but left him manacled, arms and legs, before bowing their way from the room. Moshan and Maurikios were left alone with them.

“Am I to assume that you speak Latin?” Moshan inquired of Bishop Dytryk.

“I do,” he said stiffly. “And I can tell you that the Pope will be--”

“What the Pope will be,” Moshan interrupted, “is very interested to hear of your attempt to rebel against my rule in direct contravention of the Conference of Prague, on the very eve of my conversion to Catholicism.”

Dytryk’s mouth gaped open, and for a moment he could not manage to collect himself. His fellow nobles could not speak a word of Latin, and had no clue what Moshan had just said--even Dalimir, who had long since lapsed into apathy in his resignation to execution, leaned forward in interest.

When Dytryk finally came to terms with himself enough to tell his fellows what Moshan had claimed, the din was uproarious. For the most part, they shouted obscenities and insisted that it was a convenient lie. But Wladislaw, who had been the most Sinophile of the lords prior to Diluguin’s conquest of the Kingdom, hesitated.

“Whatever you believe, it is true,” Moshan insisted, gesturing to his right. “This is why I have brought Maurikios, Prince of the Empire. You will not believe me, but perhaps you will believe him. I know you speak a bit of Khitan, Spytko. Listen to him.”

And so, reluctantly, the pious lord did. And Maurikios told him the whole truth from his own mouth: the corruption of the Tengri religion, Moshan’s meeting with the Pope at Zarnow, the decision to go on Crusade to redeem him of his sins, the promise of Maurikios’s service and conversion in exchange for Moshan’s guarantees that he would place his new servant on the Roman throne. Spytko translated for his fellows as the story continued, who slipped from fury into consternation and puzzlement.

Throughout it all, Moshan was silent. Most of all he sat sorrowfully as Maurikios openly discussed the heresy and corruption of Tengrism, which all the assembled Lords had suspected, but none of whom knew anything of the true extent of, so well was its secret kept. That, more than all else, convinced them that there must at least be some grain of truth to what Maurikios said.

“Have you not wondered,” Moshan asked when Maurikios finally grew silent, “why it was that I went on Crusade? For us, even in Christ, our promised land is here: beyond the Mountain, as prophesied by Dashi. I do not believe in that prophesy, but even so, it holds sway over my people. Yet I went, risking everything, and calling only those who went in sin with me. No Pole nor any Lithuanian was summoned. It was us, Khitan alone, who were called--because it was our sin to be forgiven.

“And have you not also wondered why it was that the Pope offered to crown me personally in Rome? Do you believe he would do that for the follower of any other faith, even one who was in communion with the Holy See? It is not out of any kindness in his heart, though I consider him a godly man and a friend. It is to welcome us--both myself and Maurikios here--into his flock.”

“Even so,” Konrad II of Slask cut in gruffly, “this tells us nothing that we care to know. If you are to convert, I welcome you to the true faith. But I do not welcome you into Poland!”

The quiet consideration which had reigned just moments before was broken again as the assembled Poles banged on the arms of their chairs and shouted agreement, even Bishop Dytryk. Moshan sighed.

“Perhaps--we will get to that. But first, tell me how you organized this rebellion.”

To Moshan’s surprise, it was not Wratislaw Gryfita, the man whom he expected, who replied, but Wladyslaw Kujawsky, the most sympathetic noble there.

“It was not difficult,” Wladyslaw said, with Dytryk translating. Wratislaw attempted to shout him down, but Wladyslaw waved him away impatiently. “It is obvious we were complicit and always has been,” Wladyslaw grunted. “There isn’t a point in denying it.”

“We began when you declared for Crusade,” he continued. “We knew we could not attack you while on the holy campaign or risk excommunication and damnation. Instead, we spent that time to stockpile weapons and train men. We also sounded out allies, and that is when we chose Dalimir as our leader. If he is old King Branimir’s son--” Dalimir spat at this, then bade Wladyslaw continue, “--then we do not know of it. That was mere convenience to lend him a claim to the throne. We chose him because he was already an outlaw from his raiding--we knew he would not betray us--and he had the most fighting experience of anyone we knew.

“We intended to strike in December, when the cold weather and snow would have stalled your troops organizing and given us time to raise the whole countryside against you. But when you called the feast in November we realized we could use it to sound out even further support, and our plans changed. We sent Dalimir south to Krakow to begin gathering his forces and secretly sent most of the rest of our levies to Inowroclaw to try to seize the Daerqa child. That’s all.”

“That’s all?” Moshan wondered to himself. It was a comprehensive and well-laid rebellion which had, clearly, been organized for over a year, and the roots of which had to have taken root even further in the past. It was not something so small, and yet the Poles treated it almost as a matter of course.

“But WHY?” Moshan asked finally. “I understand the wrongs that my father perpetrated against you, but I reversed them!”

“He REVERSED them!” Spytko laughed, hard anger in his eyes. “Do you hear that? He gave us back our privileges and everything is better!”

The Duke of Kassubi jumped from his chair and lunged forward, prompting Maurikios to dive in front of the Emperor. But the Duke did not attack, instead shouting down at the cowering form of the Huangdi, “Where is our Kingdom? Where are the rights for us to choose our own laws? Where are the rights for us to levy our own taxes? Where are the Polish merchants, who twenty years ago were so wealthy, which your grandfather stole everything from? Where are our equal titles, we who under your father’s laws are less than the meanest baron? Where are the women who killed themselves in their shame at being raped by rampaging hordes of you barbarians? And tell me this most of all, ‘Emperor’: where are the burned villages and broken bodies of the THOUSANDS of Poles your people murdered in the conquest?”

And the Duke of Kassubi spat at the feet of the Agdji Huangdi.

The Khitan Emperors, as with any disparate group of people, were often different in temperament, philosophy, goals and behavior. Some strove to be more than they were, and others fell below the honor of their station. But all, without fail, would have killed the man before them.

Perhaps Moshan succeeded because he was the first Emperor to sit the throne whose instinct was not reactive, but inquisitive. He wanted to understand. And so rather than calling for his guards, the words he spoke instead were: “tell me everything of your grievances, your own and your people’s.”

That day, Moshan drank of the bitter chalice of his inexperience as a ruler. Many of the events the Polish Lords spoke of he had never even been aware of, particularly measures instituted by Agdji II and revoked by Diluguin when he took the throne. But as the nobles finally openly discussed the sequence of escalating events that had led to their conclusion that they could not tolerate living under Khitan rule, nor could they seek the aid of other Christians after being so frequently betrayed, the Emperor was forced to admit that their view was compelling. He did not think that they were right to rebel, of course, but there had been a clear trend of marginalizing the Polish people, and he understood how they might see no way out but to fight.

After hearing their complaints, Moshan eventually sighed and, gesturing to Maurikios, moved to sit opposite the Poles. The time for bartering had come.

“The truth is this,” Moshan squeaked as he climbed awkwardly into the raised chair. “Whatever is decided here, I will go to Rome to be crowned and to have my conversion made formal. Maurikios, as well as my young son Jiesu, will go with me, both to be baptized. Whatever is to happen, I will not end my time on Earth as a heretic. But when word reaches the Khitan lords as to my conversion, I believe they will rise against me as one. They will see what I have done as an affront to Daweizu.”

Wratislaw sneered. “You are here of no kindness of your heart. You need our help, and that is all.”

Maurikios shifted meaningfully in his seat, gesturing to the chains that bound Dalimir. “It would seem,” he said, “that you need him just as much.”

“That’s right,” Moshan agreed. “Whether you believe your rebellion justified or not, you DID rebel. I would be entirely within my rights to abrogate all of your fiefs, and if I did, what then? I could easily institute a new Khitan order throughout the entirety of Poland, wiping out the Polish nobility in one day.”

“You would never succeed!” Konrad countered. “The whole of the countryside is prepared to rise against you!”

“As it was earlier this year?” Moshan shot back, now stern. “I am not making a threat. My House has gravely mistreated your people--I know this, now, as I did not before--and I wish to make amends, as I may. But I require help, and that help will prove your trustworthiness.

“I am the only one of my people who see you as equal, and you are not likely to convince others to feel the same. Most Khitan see both the Polish and Lithuanians as lesser, and none see you as necessary. A matter of convenience or not, I am the only Khitan there is who needs you--the only one who would be willing to make an arrangement.”

“And what arrangement might that be?” Dalimir asked. He had been quiet for the majority of the meeting, but once again leaned forward, suddenly interested.

Moshan snorted. “You will not walk free, if that is what you think. Even Daweizu could not convince the Khitan nobility that you are innocent. But I will not execute you; I will send you to a Holy Order, where you can be of use. As for the rest of you, I will declare you innocent of the crimes that Dalimir committed and permit you to go freely, and when I take Pommerania from Prince Sieciech, I will give the land to Polish lords.

“For your people, I do not know everything that I might be able to arrange. But in exchange for your support should the Khitan rise against me, I can promise the return of your own laws; the restoration of Polish guilds; full equality of title; a completely equal legal code between Khitans and all other members of the Jin Khidan Zhou; and whatever restrictions I might be able to enforce on the right of Khitans to settle in central Poland. Everything else I cannot guarantee, but if I might do more, I will try. Yet I can do nothing until I am crowned and returned from Rome; already I am overdue.”

“It’s a poor deal indeed which promises every reward only after we have fought and bled, and would be easily overcome if, suddenly, you had a change of heart,” Bishop Dytryk noted.

“If the Khitan rebel against me, I will need you for the rest of my life, and you will be suitably favored,” Moshan sighed. “But I understand your lack of trust; I will make a gesture.”

There, before them all and with Dytryk reading over his shoulder, Moshan penned a long letter to Pope Urban reiterating the corruption of Tengrism, explaining his deal with the Poles, and requesting that Conclave of Galich should be abolished and a Crusade called to free Poland should Moshan prove unfaithful to his word. He sealed it with the engraved pommel of a dagger which he had claimed from Ankwaana of Da’Mot on Crusade, which he had taken to using as his sigil.

“There,” he said, handing the letter to Dytryk. “Even if you do not believe me, that letter is evidence enough to destroy this entire state. Entrusting it to you is either proof that I am not lying, or guarantee enough that you can bring down the Jin Khidan Zhou if I do betray you. Keep it somewhere safe.”

“This is an immense trust you place in us,” Wladislaw breathed.

“There is no trust,” Moshan turned to him, eyes hard again. “There is only necessity. I must save my people. I can only save the Jin Khidan Zhou if I can convert it, and for that I desperately need allies. I do not trust you at all; you just rebelled against me. In the future, I hope that there can one day between trust and loyalty between us. But today, the only thing that I trust is that, if you betray me, I will be at the head of the Crusade that comes to retake my Empire, and woe to every Pole alive if I am forced to fight for what is mine.

“If you perform your duty, I will perform mine in turn, and restore to you the rights and honor you always should have possessed. From there, perhaps, trust may sprout. But you must first prove that any trust I have in you would not be grossly misplaced.”

Chapter 20: The Pale Khitan, Pt. III - Conversion

Chapter Text

“What did you promise them?”

They were in bed, a rarity these days. It was the night before Moshan was to set out for Rome, and the coronation. Siaugu probably thought to loosen his tongue with her own.

Damnably, he was in a good mood.

“Concessions,” Moshan evaded. “I agreed to restore their laws and provide legal protections for them.”

“But not the Kingdom?” she inquired.

He shook his head. “No, not the Kingdom. Poland will remain defunct. There is no reason to restore a King of Poland.”

Her eyes, which had been lazy, sharpened markedly. “And what did they offer you in return?”

“An agreement to cease rebelling and end the massacres against Khitans,” he lied. It was too simple, these lies--too simple by far to evade the reality of what he was about to do. He was about to leave Huangjin Zhongxin an empowered ruler, if not with the love of his vassals, only to return to a people who would all but assuredly be hostile. And would Siaugu not be chief among them? Her claim to power came from her origin as the granddaughter of Daweizu twice-over; under a Catholic state, the political advantage of her incestuous origins would be turned into a stain on her honor.

“It would have been easier to simply seize their titles,” she frowned. “I do not understand why you showed them mercy at all. Their lands are fertile, if devastated by the incompetence of the Gryfita. If they are rebellious, those lands should simply be taken from them.”

“I will give them a last chance,” Moshan grumbled sleepily. “As I will everyone else, yourself included. This is your last chance: stop complaining and get to bed. I leave in the morning, and it will be many months before I return. Let’s enjoy the time we have, hmm?”

Siaugu frowned all the more, but she obeyed and did not ask further, nodding to sleep cradling her small husband in her arms.

The following morning, with Siaugu fretting over letting her baby leave her so soon and chastising Moshan about why he must go on such a dangerous trip, Moshan and Maurikios took the toddler Jiesu and, along with a small handful of the Imperial Guard, packed themselves onto a few dozen carriages loaded with goods and gifts.

Their itinerary called for them to pass overland through Poland, Prague and the southeastern borders of the Western Empire, through the Duchy of Krain to reach Istria. From there they were to charter a ship (a necessity, given the time of year--the passes of the Alps would be treacherous) which would carry them across the Adriatic to Ravenna, where they would pass to western Italy and thereby down to Rome. Already dreadfully late, Moshan had called for the fastest and hardiest horses, and intended to push both them and his men hard--with no stops and little rest, it was guessed that the trip would take about two months.

Moshan was uncharacteristically quiet during the journey, often wrestling with doubts about what he was doing. There was no doubt in his mind that in Catholicism lie the saving grace of Europe. But, as before, Moshan did not necessarily believe that Catholicism was actually theologically superior; all he saw in it was the means of unifying Europe behind a single front of Christian supremacy. But in that same dream was great danger, especially of the Khitan response. He did not fear death, but he did fear for his little boy, Jiesu. The little child was rambunctious and playful, a beautiful boy whom Moshan only now had the chance to spend much time with. And yet the mere act of the Pope baptizing him could result in the Khitan nobility marking him for death, as a traitor to Daweizu.

But even as these thoughts wrestled with Moshan’s conviction, the speed of the caravan did not slow--if anything, it hastened. Through downpours of rain that left the roads quagmires of mud, they marched. The Huangdi left stuck wagons behind and galloped his horses in the hazardous conditions, barely stopping to put them down when they broke bones. He bought fresh steeds when he could, but he never slowed.

Indeed, not even the reality of a major religious conflict in north Italy could slow him. Unbeknownst to Moshan, the Duc Gustavo Malvicini had converted to the Isma’ili faith along with his father Fernando when Fernando had taken an Isma’ili to be a bed-slave in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. Corrupted by her wiles, Ravenna was in the midst of a years-long insurrection between the forces of the Ducs Malvicini and the weakened Lombard Kings, both of whom were enemies of Rome.

Under normal circ*mstances Moshan likely would have stopped to offer assistance, but beyond learning of the political situation from some knights scouring a recent battlefield for survivors, he did not delay. He could UNDERSTAND them--they spoke a broken dialect of Latin. He was so very close.

And indeed, only a few short days later, the formidable spires of the towering steeples of the city could be seen on the horizon before them. They had all but arrived.

Maurikios, during his time overseeing the Siege of Jerusalem, had seen the outside of that city, but had been recalled to the Imperial Army before the walls had been breached--he, for his part, had regretted his loss. Moshan though, like most Khitan, had been uninterested with Jerusalem; even though many holy and important things had occurred there in the past, the center of the Christian world was no longer there. That center was Rome, and in the heat of that blistering desert it was ever the soft breeze of the Roman countryside which Moshan had looked forward to as his succor at the end of a long journey.

Yes, great danger would come as a result of what took place here. No, even with his faith Moshan was not sure that he was doing the right thing, for himself or for his child. But even so, he was electrified to be present at the heart of Christendom, here in the skeletal remnants of an empire that was said to have rivaled the mythical Middle Kingdom which his ancestors claimed to once rule. There was much here to learn, and he yearned to avail himself of the chance.

A runner was sent ahead to the city to announce the arrival of the Huangdi and his intent to enter the city at the Pope’s convenience.

The Khitan party was so delayed that Urban had begun to worry that Moshan would not come, and the city was not in preparedness for him. Moshan spent many days bivouacked outside a few miles outside the walls while feasts were prepared, masses were readied, and quarters were found for him within the Vatican. Most of that time he spent playing with little Jiesu, who was now nearing his second birthday.

At first the disorder within the city seemed unusual to him--he was late, certainly, but surely it did not take three days to gather together food and a room?

Moshan soon learned, however, that a grave tragedy had befallen the city: when the Fifth Crusade had been called, the Malvicini of Ravenna had answered the summons of their Caliph and marched south with stealth. Rome had been emptied of defenders sent forth to war, and Duc Gustavo had sacked the city, even carrying away Pope Urban himself. The Pope was later freed, but only for an absolutely immense ransom. The wealth and artifacts carried away by Gustavo, as well as the ransom he collected later, were what had allowed him to successfully beat back the attempts of the weakened Papacy, as well as the anemic power of the King of Lombardy, to dislodge him.

Many artifacts of the early Church had been stolen or destroyed, though blessedly it seemed as though Duc Gustavo did not destroy many tomes of lore during his rampage through the city. Still, the walls of Rome had been breached and were still unrepaired, and much of the city was in ruins. The Pope had been forced to move from the Lateran palace to the much better-defended Vatican to better protect himself, and the Vatican was more crowded--this contributed to the delays in finding Moshan and his people quarters.

When Moshan was finally ushered into the city through the Porta del Popolo on the 6th, flanked by almost a hundred Papal troops as an honor-guard, his breath was taken by just how much damage had been done. The gate itself was undamaged, but the wall at many points surrounding it had been completely destroyed, and it seemed as if fires had been set to many of the quarters of the city through which he rode. The people still turned out in great numbers to see not just a living Khitan, but their Emperor (this visit would give rise to the myth that all noble Khitan were dwarfs who fought from the back of ponies), and cheered him at all turns. Yet even if their spirits were high with the success of the Crusade, Moshan grieved at how serious the damage had been to this great city, and the lives of its people.

When they finally reached the Vatican and he and Maurikios were shown in to Urban’s study, the Pope wearily sighed his agreement over Moshan’s assessment of the situation.

“It has been a grievous, grievous blow,” he acknowledged sorrowfully. “We have lost many artifacts of the saints, worst of all the bones of St. Peter--God send that they were only stolen, and not maliciously destroyed! And the damage to the city is great also, as you no doubt saw; we have been punished for our overconfidence, for our presumption that here, in the heart of Italia, we were safe from the reprisals of heathens.

“But I would pay that price all again if it meant what you have achieved!” he insisted, grasping Moshan by his small arms. “The Crusade was victorious, Christendom has reclaimed Jerusalem, and now you have also convinced the Prince,” Urban nodded to Maurikios, “to convert and join us as well. I cannot think of a greater victory, though I can yet think of greater repayment.”

From a small door on the other side of the study, in stepped a soldier in immaculate plate. The crosses etched into the metal of his helm marked him as a member of a holy order, but when his helm was removed, this was revealed to be impossible: he was a Khitan.

“Who is this?” Moshan asked uncertainly. Maurikios, who could not understand the Latin which Moshan and Urban used to communicate, stood cautiously at his entry.

“I am called Karl by my family,” the man replied in slightly accented Khitan. “Yet my right name is Yaerud Chaqal. I am the son of Aerlu’on the Exile, and Hochmeister of the Teutonic Knights.”

“The Exile,” Moshan hissed, sucking in sudden breath. “Of course--he went into the Western Empire. Then there are Catholic Khitans?”

“Many,” Chaqal replied. “My middle brother Singer rules as Herzog of Wittenberg on behalf of the Emperor, and my eldest brother Niauraq, sadly dead, has given the Lady of Erdelyorszag in the land of the Magyars many sons to be her heirs. All have children of their own.”

Moshan collapsed back into his chair, rubbing his tired eyes. “We did not know what happened to Aerlu’on. Daweizu did not like hearing news of the son he exiled, from what I was told.”

The Pope could not speak Khitan, and now it was his turn to have no idea what Moshan was saying. But he cut in anyway, saying, “Whatever might have happened between your families in the past, Karl is a loyal Catholic who rose to be Hochmeister on his own merits. The Teutons were always meant to fight pagans in the north. In recognition of your service in the Crusade, I asked whether he would give over his service to you, and he agreed.”

“Truly?” Moshan asked.

Chaqal nodded. “It is so. You were not the one who exiled my father, and he never spoke ill of any of his brothers, or even his own father. Even in his exile he loved them all, and held no hate for their decision in his heart. I would spit on his memory if I did not offer my help to you, cousin, in your time of need.”

The Pope, ‘Karl,’ Moshan and Maurikios spoke for some time, discussing the success in the Crusade, Maurikios’s conversion, and Moshan’s future plans.

“The conversion of the Jin Khidan Zhou only begins with me,” the Huangdi said, “but it must continue down to my people. Yet there are so few Catholic Khitans, and my people will resist if the Poles oversee conversion. Before all else, I foresee the need for two things: priests, and land to grant fiefs to new Catholic lords who can support my rule.”

“Land you have aplenty,” Chaqal noted. “To your east lies untamed masses who could easily be subjugated, and to your northwest there is still the territory of Pommerania, granted in the Conference of Prague.”

“The Conference and Conclave are no longer in effect,” the Pope cut in as Moshan translated for him. “Until there is a new agreement, the Khitans occupy Poland unjustly, and Prince Sieciech cannot be deprived of his last titles.”

These words struck Moshan like a blow, and for hours he argued with the Pope about the necessity of retaining the prior agreements between the Khitans and the Catholics, but Urban would not budge.

“Your conversion absolves you of personal guilt, but you did not organize either agreement, and the lies that went into their words are not yours alone to be absolved of.” Moshan sighed, and Urban’s face softened. “My friend--I am not saying that the Church will refuse to name you rightful King of Poland. From what you say you have begun to work towards a rapport of sorts with the Poles, and they may even welcome you. But a new agreement must be reached, one that fully integrates the Khitans into Europe, not the morass of half-measures which the Conclave represents.

“It will be months yet before you are crowned; much must be arranged, and guests must arrive. This is the city of knowledge; I suggest you spend the time you have studying. There is much to learn, and much that might yet help you convince your people of the truth of Catholic doctrine--for you as well, Maurikios.”

Although the Emperor was at first furious that the Pope delayed so long to inform him of his intentions to abrogate the agreements of Prague and Galich, with time (and a cooler head) Moshan came to see that this was an opportunity. If the Conclave was to be re-negotiated, even if the Khitan lost out on some of the concessions which Daweizu had been able to wring from the Church five decades ago, Moshan should be able to leverage his new position with the Church to enforce further restrictions on his own vassals. He would lose power relative to the Pope, yes, but his vassals could also be forced by the Church to give up many of their own privileges.

Prior to their arrival in Rome, Moshan had not spent much time discussing the particulars of Maurikios’s conversion with him, nor of the Prince’s plans about how to reform the Roman Empire along Catholic lines. Moshan shared his ideas about making an agreement with the Church to cede some temporal power in exchange for Church restrictions against heretical vassals in order to speed their conversions, and Maurikios was an enthusiastic supporter. But he noted a problem: they still had no priests with which to effect these conversions.

Conversations with Urban, who usually met with Moshan at least once every other day, soon led both men to seek out the Dominican Order as a solution. Their members came from every Catholic state, and so avoided the concerns that the Khitan would have by learning from Poles, or the Greeks from learning from Italians. They were also an Order dedicated principally to holy inquisition, and their deep libraries were open to any who could prove their dedication to God. Moshan eagerly utilized his relationship with Urban to gain access, and spent weeks poring over the private tomes of the Order, reading deeply on inquisitions and heresies.

Finally, about a month after Moshan took to the Dominican archives, the Pope informed the Emperor that the city had been made sufficiently ready for his coronation, and passage had been arranged for those Kings who wished to travel from across the Alps--due to the season, all the passes were snowed in, and sea travel was the requisite alternative.

But this was not just a crowning but a baptism, although the guests did not yet know that. They were stunned and pleased to find that Moshan was incredibly generous: although the Pope had organized and paid for the feasts, entertainment and masses which were to encompass the main event, Moshan spent a not-insignificant amount of his own finances to bring hundreds of gifts in his wagon train for those Lords who came, in order to make the event one that would be well-remembered outside the Jin Khidan Zhou--just in case he needed friends outside the Liao.

For most of the month of February, the Pope personally met with Moshan for hours each day in order to teach him his catechisms; having not been born to Catholicism, after all, Moshan was required to be instructed as if he had been a pagan for the whole of his life. Although the Emperor knew Christianity intimately and Catholicism very well (frustrated, he reminded Urban that he probably knew the intricacies of Catholicism better than many rural priests did--HE, after all, could actually read Latin, whereas most simple parish priests were illiterate!), nevertheless Urban was insistent that anyone not baptized to the faith as a child had to learn, to ensure that heresy could not creep back in.

And so Moshan endured it, learning very little that he did not know, and in many cases frustrating Urban by questioning matters of doctrine that did not have a basis in the Bible--he had a very strong memory of the Good Book.

But, however much Moshan might have toyed good-naturedly with the Pope, he never doubted the underlying correctness of Christianity, and performed the rites required of him as quickly as he could. And even if he did not learn much of Catholicism, he DID learn much of Urban himself, and of what so scholarly and wise a man as he believed, doubted, questioned and reconciled in his own faith. It was a surprisingly intimate and insightful look into the vulnerabilities of the head of the Church, one that Moshan did not believe the Pope had intended, yet which the Huangdi was nevertheless grateful for.

The morning of March 2nd, the chosen date of the coronation, dawned overcast and unseasonably cold. Bundled in furs over their best clothes, the various nobles and onlookers piled into St. Peter’s Basilica to witness what they already thought would be one of the strangest things they ever saw: the coronation of a dwarf hero of the Fifth Crusade, a Tengri Khitan, in a Catholic church.

All eyes followed Moshan as he entered in his best finery, well-preserved silken robes meant for a child, purchased for none other than Daweizu’s (then) youngest son, Djoborin, in the waning days of the Second Liao Empire, when trade with Qin China was still possible. Behind him Maurikios bore Diluguin’s jade-inlaid crown on a simple wooden trestle.

As they approached the front of the church, the assembled guests expected Maurikios to place the trestle on the altar and turn right, toward the baptismal font, while Moshan knelt before the altar and waited for the baptism. But when both he and the Huangdi turned right, dozens of lords were so stunned as to stand, and as the Pope began the baptism of Moshan, the din was uproarious, so thunderous as to shatter the peaceful calm of the basilica and make the Pope’s own words incomprehensible, even to Moshan who stood right before him.

“MOSHAN! MOSHAN! MOSHAN!” they cried, in every accent to be found in Europe. The Khitan had finally joined them in full, and they were beside themselves with joy.

“Never was a mass so exciting, nor a group of faithful so pleased to be present at church,” Urban wrote one of his compatriots, Bishop Fausto of Piperno, the following month. “And though I am tempted to be cross that the Word of God does not carry the same weight as the conversion of a single man, I cannot find it within myself to be. God willing, the Emperor’s conversion will be one of the most celebrated days in the long history of Christendom.”

Despite his best efforts, neither Moshan nor Maurikios could be pried away from the feasting for two whole days following their baptisms. Maurikios was much-beloved, but even the hoped-for return of the Roman Empire to the Catholic fold could not compare to the tremendous surprise that had been Moshan’s sudden conversion, and lords who would not have been able to understand his vassals’ fury at the news constantly questioned him about why he had kept it a secret, when “the whole of Christianity would have joined the celebration had they known!”

Finally, blessedly, an excuse arrived for the two men to get more than a few hours’ sleep: the baptism of little Jiesu, who was now free to become Catholic without the need for Catechism, as Moshan was now a Catholic himself, and the boy not more than a toddler.

Jiesu’s baptism was a private affair, with only the Pope, Moshan and Maurikios in attendance--although those still partaking in the revelry knew the Pope was baptizing the lad and drank and ate in his honor not far away, Moshan did not want the child to be scared by the din.

“I know it will be difficult to understand,” Moshan told the lad as Jiesu’s face scrunched up with the struggle of comprehension. “But what we’ve done here today will mark you for the rest of your life. If I can make it so, I hope it will be for the better. But if not: please, my child. Forgive me.”

After the baptism of Jiesu, Moshan and his entourage began the long process of saying their goodbyes, readying for the return to the Jin Khidan Zhou. But they were slow in the preparing, as Moshan was loathe to leave the city behind, and the many hundreds of Dominicans who had agreed to travel to the Jin Khidan Zhou temporarily in order to begin the process of conversion took many weeks to ready themselves. It was the beginning of April before Moshan was prepared to travel, and in warmer weather and with less sense of urgency the Emperor’s procession did not move nearly so quickly as they had when he had forced them, through mud and sleet and exhaustion, to make it to Rome in just under two months. Pausing frequently to sightsee and speak with local notables, Moshan’s escort would not make it back to the Jin Khidan Zhou until September.

Unfortunately, Moshan had an enemy that he had already long forgotten. Zaccaria of Ancona, the commander of the Italic forces during the Crusade whom Moshan had humiliated and usurped, received word of the Emperor’s conversion only a few short days after it had occurred, and rapidly sent his fastest ship to the city of Vodena, which he had leased from the Byzantine Empress. From there word reached the ears of the Empress herself, along with news that Maurikios had converted at Moshan’s side.

The implication--and threat--was clear. The Basilissa sent her fastest messenger with orders to reach Galich and inform the current Lord there, the descendent of the dispossessed Djoborin, of what had transpired. She also sent a sack of gold to buy replacement mounts, and made it clear for the man not to spare his steeds.

Word reached Galich in just over a month.

Chapter 21: The Pale Khitan, Pt. IV - The Rebellion for Daweizu

Chapter Text

The Lord of Galich was the more famous of the two men named Yaerud Tabuyen, being the heir of Yaerud Djoborin, who had launched a rebellion against the rule of Huangdi Diluguin in an effort to be named the Child of Prophesy, the same conflict in which Moshan won his reputation as a competent field commander.

Tabuyen had been but five years old when his father had been executed by Diluguin with the Spear of the Destroyer, Daweizu’s weapon, marking him as an enemy of all Khitan. The experience had scarred the young man greatly, as well as shaming him and costing him a great deal of political power and social clout. Although technically a descendent of Agdji II through his mother Qadju, Tabuyen had been looked down upon and denied the right to compete in the succession due to his father’s failings.

Now freshly an adult and freed from his regency, word of Moshan’s betrayal falls into his lap, the perfect opportunity. Tabuyen was quick to point out to his fellow lords that Moshan senselessly pardoned all of the Polish nobles when they were clearly guilty, and took Jiesu with him without explanation--solid evidence that the Roman missive was not simple propaganda aimed at souring the Khitan relationship with Maurikios. All evidence pointed to the probability that Moshan had betrayed Daweizu and broken the Conclave of Galich, a violation of every principle that bound the Khitan to their Emperor and a sin from which there could be no recovery. The only recourse was revenge: Moshan had to be deposed.

Yet there were problems with that, of two sorts. First was the nature of the successor to the throne.

Even if the Khitan were by-and-large willing to accept Tabuyen’s leadership of the rebellion due to his initiative and his symbolic control of the Mountain of Dreams, they were NOT willing to tolerate raising him up to replace Moshan. Whatever the sins of the pale dwarf, his father had been a legend, and not a one of them would accept any but one of Diluguin’s other sons ascending to the Dragon Throne. Instead, they all vouched for Diluguin’s penultimate child, Aerlu’or.

Diluguin had had two ‘blood-true’ sons, fruits of a union with his own daughter Telgen: Aerlu’or and Diluguin the Younger. Although Diluguin the Younger was not terribly malformed, he was mentally unstable (the Khitan vassals whispered that it was because Telgen had begotten him during the last days of Diluguin’s life by as good as raping the half-conscious monarch, but in reality the most likely cause was simply the beginning of negative genetic markers from incest). Aerlu’or, on the other hand, had many advantages: he was old enough to avoid a long regency but young enough to be controlled in his youth; he was sharp and strong; he already held land in Huangjin Zhongxin (this would allow armies to march on the capital, what was otherwise an extreme taboo, in order to “rescue” their rightful liege); and, perhaps most importantly, he was known to have a good relationship with his elder brother Moshan, which they hoped would prevent the elder brother from simply capturing and executing the younger if he returned before they could take the capital.

The second issue was what to do with Moshan himself.

No ruling Huangdi had ever been deposed previously, nor had even faced serious threat of being deposed--the closest was Diluguin, yet that was before he had transited the spears and become Emperor in truth. Moreover, Djoborin’s rebellion was founded on the basis that he was not Huangdi, but the bearer of the Mandate of Heaven: a philosophical debate which would have split the two titles, turning Diluguin into western facsimile of a Japanese monarch under the Shogunate: bereft of real power and subject to the line of Djoborin, who would have claimed true power through their wielding of the Mandate. But even without having traversed the spears, he would not have been harmed, and would have retained his lands and titles.

Once a ruler had taken a row in the Mausoleum to be their own, they were Emperors for life. Indeed, even before the Mausoleum had been constructed, the principle that an elected Emperor who had been crowned could not be deposed could be traced back all the way to Dashi’s day. It had simply never been done before. It HAD to be done now, of course--Moshan’s actions were simply too heinous to allow him to continue to reign. But what would they do to him? What COULD they do to a Huangdi who had transited the spears?

At first, most of them agreed that, at most, they would strip him of his titles and exile him and his family west. Yet this soon started tongues wagging that Moshan was allied with the Pope, and for so long as he lived a Crusade could be called down upon the Khitan. Zealous voices, chief among them Uldjin II of Podlyashe, demanded that the Emperor and his family be executed for their crimes against the name of Daweizu.

As hatred was stoked throughout the Jin Khidan Zhou for Moshan and his betrayal of everything it was to be Khitan, the position of lords throughout the realm radicalized against him, and many took up the cry that Moshan must be executed. The Huangdi ruled for life, after all, and so the only way to be rid of Moshan was to end his.

On the 19th of April, while the court at Huangjin Zhongxin was still reeling from the fresh news and had no idea either whether it was true or how to respond if it was, Tabuyen made his move. With the support of the overwhelming majority of the vassals of the realm--including the ‘Kingmaker,’ Zygimantas gada Talava, for whom it seemed Moshan’s kind overtures meant nothing compared to Tabuyen’s offer of independence in return for service--the Tqosi of Galich demanded that Siaugu, ruling as regent in her husband’s absence, immediately abdicate on his behalf and surrender the gates of Huangjin Zhongxin to the “loyal vassals of the Liao,” who vowed to “see our rightful lord Aerlu’or placed on the throne.” It was promised that she and her children would be spared if she cooperated.

She rather rudely communicated to “the little boy with a woman’s name” that he should find a stick of suitable size and use it to stimulate his behind, as “it is the only way one so emasculated might find pleasure, other than fantasizing about the impossible.”

In a humiliated fury, Tabuyen rallied his men for war.

Despite Siaugu’s brash confidence, the picture was grim. Zygimantas was in possession of a massive army of woodmen he had gathered together for raiding, and the loss of his support could be fatal on its own. Worse still, the Poles were all but assuredly going to use this opportunity to try to seize their independence a second time--curse her husband’s gullible nature, to free them of all things!--and that left Siaugu with no support but the Imperial Army. She was as confident as Moshan was that she could rely on them, but they were still at half strength from the Crusade. Even if they were as good as their reputation--each as good as two men in any other army--they were still drastically outnumbered.

Isolated in Huangjin Zhongxin and with all but no means of communication to any vassals who may have remained loyal, Siaugu also had the ill fortune of having very limited support in the capital’s hinterland. Most of the local hetmen and mayors were furious over the rumors that Moshan had betrayed Daweizu and were doing everything they could to refuse any requests for aid.

For months, chaos reigned as the Huangho vainly struggled to raise up forces to support her husband’s rule.

Help came from the place which Siaugu least expected it: the Poles.

On the morning of the 10th of June, an armed band was seen on the outskirts of the capital. The Empress feared that it was the rebel lords and prepared a last (and desperate) defense, but it was instead the van of Lord Spytko of Kassubi, who had ridden hard from Danzig to reach the capital after crossing the dangerous no-man’s-land between the rebelling Tqosi of Wielkopolska and Majaus to rendezvous with his fellow Polish lords.

“Poland rides to the Agdji Huangdi!” he cried in his broken Khitan. “To arms, come, come! Send men behind, follow I, to Chelmno, Chelmno!”

And just as quickly he was gone, riding back down the road to alert the rest of the crown territories: Pogesania, Bartia, Galindia, Warmia. They all rose to his call.

“Ride out, ride out!” Siaugu cried. “Follow him to Chelmno, or we will all die hoping for a miracle!”

When Moshan’s escort finally reached the borders of Poland in late August, they finally heard word of the rebellion that wracked the country. Moshan had anticipated trouble from the Khitan nobility, but he had not expected it so quickly, so violently, or so absolutely.

Not stopping to learn details, Moshan finally acted with the speed which he should have from the start, racing across the Oder and riding as hard as he could for Huangjin Zhongxin. When he reached Kalisz and found it held against him by Uldjin of Wielkopolska, he instead raced north to Poznan, where he finally heard the good news that Polish forces had supported the Imperial Army. They would have a chance, at least.

He reached the new army camp at Brzesc on the 10th of October and, blessedly, found it well-organized. There he greeted the Polish lords and thanked them for their trust in him; all had happened as he had promised, and he reassured them all that, when this rebellion was gloriously crushed, they would be repaid for their loyalty.

Yet his talk was empty for so long as the news was ill. Pinsk, held by the underage Tqosi Sen Dorhan II, had been sacked by the roving armies of the rebel lords just a few days earlier, and at the time scouts reported that the enemy force was almost 15,000 men strong.

“This will be an almost impossible fight, if your vassals’ levies fight as hard as your own do,” Maurikios whispered to Moshan.

“They don’t,” Moshan replied firmly.

Although Tabuyen was in possession of a much larger army than the Emperor, and despite the brashness that might be expected of his youth, the lord of Galich proved to be cautious, and wise beyond his years. His first move was to attempt to sow dissent between Moshan and the Army, but to his immense frustration, he learned that the Army had unequivocally refused to contemplate betraying the Emperor, even after they learned that he truly had converted. The veterans of the force had all seen how Diluguin had treated his son, and although they loved and respected Moshan in his own right, Diluguin was still the specter that ruled their hearts, and it was his absolute confidence in his boy which kept them firmly bound to the Huangdi, no matter where he was headed.

This was a major concern for Tabuyen. He was rightly fearful of the experience of the Imperial Army, and, although his foremost commander Sen Guju was confident that he could beat them in open plains, both Guju and Tabuyen knew that neither Moshan nor, especially, Maurikios would be so idiotic as to permit themselves to be caught out like that.

Guju advocated a strategy of isolation, continuing to circle the Imperial Army until it was finally out-of-position, and then striking all at once and with overwhelming force. But Tabuyen did not trust the under-experienced Guju to go against a legend like Moshan, or even a legend in the making like Maurikios; it would be too easy for either of them to fool Guju into believing that they were out-of-place only to spring some trap, to their ruin.

Instead, Tabuyen elected to starve the Emperor out.

Tabuyen’s caution and inexperience--traits almost universally despised amongst the Khitan--proved to be possibly the most valuable he possessed. Where a bolder (and stupider) lad might have risked it all in a direct assault, Tabuyen knew his limits. He did not know enough to design a strategy to achieve victory in the field, and knew that the outcomes of an attack were uncertain. With superior leadership, the Imperial Army was more likely than not to succeed in any defensive conflict. The solution was therefore to force Moshan to attack rather than defend.

The strategy was straightforward: Tabuyen reasoned that Moshan would likely attempt to defend in southwestern Poland, at the conflux of Hungary, Galich, and the Holy Roman Empire. The territory was friendly to him, he could receive supplies from neighboring realms, and his proximity to Galich was clearly intended to put fear into Tabuyen’s heart and encourage a reckless attack.

But Moshan’s rule was only as secure as his food was, and his proof that he could continue to defend his people. Rather than falling for Moshan’s bait, Tabuyen instead ordered Sen Guju to capture all of the territories surrounding the northern Carpathians, burning from Sieradz to Opole. Isolated from their supplies Moshan would not be able to feed his army even with foreign support, and the Empire itself would largely have fallen into the laps of the rebels. He would be forced to descend and fight, and on the offensive the Imperial Army would be hopelessly outnumbered and desperate.

The plan was good, its chances of success great. Moshan came a hair’s breadth from being trapped up in it. But he made a single small decision which caused it to come tumbling down: he feinted an attack at Guju in Wislica, causing the panicked field commander to rush south in the hopes of cutting off the passes into the mountains… which half of the army under Maurikios still occupied.

Tabuyen had done everything right, save that he had expected that Guju would be able to spot a trap laid by Moshan if he were not actively pursuing him. Instead Guju believed the half-implemented plan had already worked in forcing the Huangdi from the mountains prematurely, and as Moshan’s force lazily “retreated” towards the passes, he bit hard on the bait, overtaking them and turning to give battle.

The strategy was not without its risks, as Maurikios was unexpectedly delayed in his arrival. Moshan’s part of the army was forced to defend on its own for over an hour rather than for minutes as they had planned, and at several points the life of the Emperor was directly threatened. During a cavalry charge which targeted the center, Yaerud Chaqal nobly took a position in front of the Emperor to shield him; he was pierced by many lances, and died in Moshan’s arms just seconds after the charge had been repelled. So was dishonor repaid with honor twice-over, and Moshan was painfully reminded of the debt owed to the Exiles.

But the Army was, for the most part, able to maneuver itself out of significant danger until Maurikios arrived, and as soon as the remainder of Moshan’s levies poured down from the rear of Guju’s force the battle was as good as over. Trapped on both sides, the rebel army was bled down to half its size before it could extricate itself and flee, bringing it into a manageable range for the Imperial Army to engage offensively.

The news of the victorious Battle of Sandec threw Tabuyen’s rebellion into turmoil. The young lord of Galich had experienced a rapid reversal of fortunes, from having a decisive upper-hand against the loyalists to commanding forces equivalent to the Emperor’s, yet much more poorly-led.

Confidence about the success of the revolt, which had seemed to be flowing freely like a wellspring just weeks earlier, suddenly shriveled. For months the Imperial court had been issuing proclamations at Moshan’s order declaring that that the Kinship Clause was a violation of the intent of Daweizu enforced by Weizong, Agdji II, and Moshan’s conversion was intended to adhere to the wishes of Daweizu rather than this corrupted version of his teachings. For so long as Tabuyen had the advantage, none believed it. Yet now, with the tide turning in Moshan’s favor, many fair-weather lords soon found it within themselves to believe that perhaps this claim they thought was insane just a few days ago had merit after all.

And these were not the only fractures within the rebellious coalition. Yaerud Ago--grandson of the Lord Regent, and an opponent of incest on the grounds that his two youngest sisters, sired by his father and eldest sister, were insane, physically deformed abominations--launched a daring rebellion of his own to oust his elder brother Uldjin--the selfsame lord who had, upon a time, declared eternal loyalty to Moshan's father Diluguin--from his seat at Izjaslavl in the name of “ending the madness that has gripped this state and supporting the rightful Emperor.” Uldjin’s forces retreated from the coalition to defend against his brother’s armies, and in the chaos, Moshan was able to liberate the Polish territories which Guju had managed to capture.

With no more Imperial lands occupied, it all came down to one more battle, to determine which side would have the strength to finish the other.

On the outskirts of Sieradz castle, the seat of the Gryfita Kings, that battle took place.

Ashamed of his prior defeat and fearful that the “end of the legacy of Daweizu and death of the last true Khitans” would be laid at his feet, Guju waged a meticulous campaign that was far above his skill, expending all of his effort and focus in a desperate struggle to match his opponents. It was not without results.

Compared to other battles featuring the Imperial Army, it was not as one-sided as one might have expected--especially so, when one considers that the Imperial Army was on the defensive, and should have had a massive advantage. Guju had caught Moshan’s force trying to pull south toward Krakow and better terrain, and at risk of being encircled the Huangdi had been forced to retreat to the river confluences around Sieradz, the best terrain he could reach. The Imperial Army was forced to rely on simple superiority of training, as well as good, high ground for archers, and a time of day that put the sun in the enemy’s eyes.

Still, it was a decisive victory, even if it came at what amounted to unusually high cost for a Khitan force. Sieradz was the end of any pretensions to victory on the part of the rebels. Although in the name of Daweizu they were not yet ready to surrender, they knew it was over. With numerical superiority, there was a chance; with parity, they could hope for a miracle. Facing inferior numbers, the Imperial Army had never lost a battle.

The Battle of Leczyca at the beginning of September only reinforced the imminence of the rebel defeat. Ago II had successfully deposed his brother, ended hostilities, and declared his loyalty to Moshan; Siau Uldjin of Wielkopolska, the only lord to the west of the Imperial forces who could threaten their rear, had been captured in battle; and, with Leczyca itself, the rebel army had been reduced from an effective fighting force to glorified partisans, forcibly expelled from central Poland and forced into hit-and-run tactics, constantly retreating further to the northeast.

The long process of surrenders began around this time. Shulu Baisha-an, the Tqosi of Majaus, approached the Imperial Army as it entered Plock, kowtowed for his grave insult, and willingly entered into imprisonment. Zygimantas gada Talava of Lithuania sent a messenger to Moshan shortly thereafter asking for terms, and in exchange for an agreement to convert to Catholicism and send hostages to the court, safe passage was guaranteed to the Lithuanian lord, although Moshan absolutely demanded that he must present himself in Huangjin Zhongxin, to be held with the other traitors.

By the end of November, it was over. The only remaining unrepentant or uncaptured rebels by that time were the three most radical of the lot: Purgyal Tsubartsan of Volyn, Yaerud Cha of Kiev, and Tabuyen himself. Qutug II of Trakai had been the last to stand with them, but he was captured as the Imperial Army moved into Lietuvai territory, hunting the last partisan forces of the rebels.

In the final battle of the rebellion, at Zemaiteje on the very edge of the lands of the Jin Khidan Zhou, the fleeing forces of Tabuyen--who had joined the army following their defeat at Sandec in order to assume command from the disgraced Guju, only to be roundly defeated himself--were enveloped by the Imperial Army and, in the melee, Tabuyen was subdued by the Imperial Guard and dragged before Moshan and Maurikios in chains. He had clearly been attempting to escape into exile prior to his capture, as his band of partisans were caught while approaching the border; he was only spared the shame of flight through his defeat.

With the leader of the rebellion and the son of Djoborin captured, it was over. The remaining rebel soldiers threw down their arms, and the Jin Khidan Zhou entered a new age from which they could never fully turn back: the age of the Catholic Huangdi.

Unlike the Great Polish Uprising, the “Rebellion for Daweizu” held pride of place in Khitan historiography as far back as the late 18th century, with most scholars considering it one of the most important inflection points of the post-exile Liao, the violent rebellion of the vassalage necessitating Moshan’s later response with the Unions of Galich.

Recent scholarship has begun to move away from this view, as preserved letters from Urban IV suggest that plans for the First Union were laid well in advance of the revolt. Rather, the rebellion has come to be understood as a natural result of the Khitan respect for their deceased Emperors, and medieval Khitan society’s usage of social charisma and prestige as the currency for posthumously interpreting their wishes.

This, historian Lori Horace persuasively argues, is why Moshan was so violently rebelled against: lacking gravitas himself, Moshan’s view of Daweizu’s intent could not be impressed upon the populace to become the new standard interpretation of the great Emperor’s will. Instead, rather than harnessing the authority of his ancestors, Moshan was viewed as in breach of this authority, the unspoken contract between the prior Emperors and their successors. To transgress this authority violated the sacred principles of the foundation of the Jin Khidan Zhou and the wishes of Daweizu, the one Khitan whom it was all but sacrilege to disobey.

Yet scholars have shown time and again that Agdji I’s sayings and beliefs were almost regularly reinterpreted as situations called for, and many of his policies were abolished or reversed even by his immediate successors. So, rather than being the result of some inherently impossible feat, the violent response Moshan provoked from his vassals must instead be understood as simply part of a social struggle between the two groups, where Moshan was not sufficiently respected to make the reinterpretation he strove for without resorting to force.

In the aftermath of the rebellion, Moshan was simply tired. He had not been in Huangjin Zhongxin for over a year, and, excepting the brief feast in February of 1255, had been either at war or gnawed by some other concern almost constantly since he was first proclaimed Huangdi, in 1253. He had been facing some conflict, challenge or other for over four years.

Yet he did not wish to face Siaugu either, and so, grudgingly, wearily, he set about the maintenance of the realm, ruling, for the moment, from the command tent.

The first matter to attend to was the róngyù de Qìdān--Maurikios.

Maurikios, when he first begged to enter Moshan’s service at the beginning of the Fifth Crusade, had been young and sloppy: skilled (for a westerner, at any rate), yet untrained and unhardened by combat.

Now, in the span of just four years, he had seen more of war than almost any other living man: from the armies of the Roman Empire to Khitan war tactics, a combination of Frankish and Arabian combat styles on Crusade, Polish guerilla tactics in the Uprising, Italic battle preparations during the battles near Ravenna, and finally, and most illuminatingly, how Khitans fight their own. He had traveled from Constantinople to Jerusalem and Huangjin Zhongxin to Rome. He abandoned his faith not out of opportunism but a genuine belief that it would be the best means to help his people, and as a reward for his selflessness had been molded into a warrior that Daweizu himself would look upon and call worthy.

Yet, though the personal rewards had been great, Maurikios’s family life had been stricken by tragedy. His wife Mitze first came down with gout, then, in the years Maurikios was absent from her, had taken another lover. She had been pregnant with this new man’s child when she finally succumbed to her gout, and though the child did not survive it was a tremendous humiliation to the Prince nonetheless.

Even so, Maurikios had not said a word of it to Moshan since he had received news of her death, shortly after returning from campaign. The Prince had not seen his son Philetos for more than three months in the past four years and had not uttered a single word of complaint, nor even requested that the boy be allowed to accompany Moshan’s party to Rome.

In recognition for his service, as the rebellion was finally crushed, Moshan personally gave Maurikios the hand of his sister Baisbun, who had been his camp attendant since the Polish uprising.

Baisbun was not a handsome woman, and though she could be somewhat charming in her own way, was more gruff than anything. Those outside of the Jin Khidan Zhou might well have called Moshan a stingy Emperor indeed, to offer such a woman in recompense for Maurikios’s deeds. Yet, aside from the fact that Maurikios and Baisbun themselves both desired to wed, the hand of Moshan’s sister was not the whole story of this gift.

“You are my brother,” Moshan told the Prince seriously, gripping his arm as tightly as his little hands could. “Whether or not you marry Baisbun, you are one of us by your choice, and we accept you; our words are not spoken lightly. And you and I together have tread roads I have walked with no one else.

“You are a Roman first, but you will always also be a Khitan, and I would give anything for my own. When you become Emperor, if you are ever in need, you may call upon me. Even if the Jin Khidan Zhou is falling down around me, I will come to your aid. Our two Empires were meant to walk east as one.”

Moshan next focused upon identifying those lords who were truly repentant--or sufficiently beaten--that they could be trusted to convert and be allowed their freedom.

The number was larger than Moshan had feared when he first heard of the rebellion, but far smaller than he had hoped. His efforts to save Daerqa Kudji during the Great Polish Uprising had been remembered, and although (because?) the child was young, he agreed immediately to convert, to follow the will of the Huangdi.

Shulu Baisha-an, member of another one of the oldest Khitan dynasties, scion of the loyal Irkins of the steppe, had already kowtowed and begged forgiveness. Although the Dominican friars who had come with Moshan did not believe he was ready for a true baptism, Baisha-an had apparently taken it to heart that his loyalty to the Liao of today must transcend a loyalty to the faith of the old Liao, and was already striving to set aside many of the trappings of Tengrism, and encouraged his people to do the same. Lying directly to the south of Huangjin Zhongxin, his conversion was of particular worth.

Ago II of Podlyashe was not repentant at all, for he had never rebelled--he was a loyalist to Moshan and believer in the ideal of a Catholic Jin Khidan Zhou, and had deposed his brother in order to serve the Emperor. For his loyalty he was lavished with titles and gold following Moshan’s victory.

Finally, there was Zygimantas. The gada Talava did not have a good reputation in Huangjin Zhongxin, not after Moshan had spent so much time and effort to encourage strong relations with them, only to be betrayed at the first promise of independence. Yet Zygimantas appeared to be… convincingly apologetic, and promised to give over his children as hostages of his good behavior and convert. His willingness to preach to the Lithuanian people saved him, and in exchange for his promise to be baptized, Moshan did let him free.

Yet the number of unrepentant lords was much greater, and included several realms that had not even formally rebelled against the Jin Khidan Zhou, due to the minority of their current lords.

Siau Uldjin of Wielkopolska, Yaerud Tabuyen of Krakow, Yaerud Abo (Moshan’s own brother!) of Sandomierz, Yaerud Qutug II of Trakai, Purgyal Tsubartsan of Volyn, Yaerud Tabuyen of Galich, and Yaerud Cha of Kiev all refused to convert to Catholicism and, despite Moshan’s victory, continued to decry his abandonment of Tengrism as a violation of the wishes of Daweizu and an existential threat to the purity of the Khitan.

Moshan attempted to meet with them, but was only harangued from all sides for his betrayals.

“I do not care what you think of me,” Moshan spat at them. “I am the Huangdi: I lead, and you follow. But I am not unsympathetic to you; you believe that you are defending the will of Daweizu. You are not. In a short time, I will present evidence that Weizong betrayed the wishes of Daweizu when he took Cheu’en as his wife. Until then, I will remove you from the dungeons, and place you all under guard in the Imperial Palace.”

“If you place me under guard, I will merely escape it!” Tabuyen cried, and his fellow rebels shouted their agreement.

Moshan’s eyes were truly cold when he met those of his cousin, and Tabuyen recoiled. “I am giving you a chance,” Moshan said softly. “But I was there when your father died. I saw the spear that impaled him, and do not forget that I still possess Daweizu’s weapon. It is a choice that you can make for yourself.”

“For all of you,” he said, taking a step back and raising his voice. “I have chosen not to kill you, not to take your lands, not to mark you enemies of Khitan everywhere--those are my choices. But my patience is thin; if you choose to betray me while I gather the evidence you claim you wish to see, I will tear you down.”

Before confronting Siaugu, Moshan also had another uncomfortable obligation: deciding what to do with his little brother Aerlu’or.

Aerlu’or had done nothing wrong; it was not his choice to be selected by the rebel coalition as their preferred puppet-Emperor, just as it was not his fault that he had been born to incest. He had grown up to be a bit of a lazy and paranoid child, but he was not any different in his heart. Moshan still remembered the bittersweet days when it was he and Aerlu’or alone, caring for their father in the midst of his worst hours.

Yet the rebels had taught Moshan that it was not safe to have a claimant so very close to the Imperial Palace, with his own castle and garrison. Konigsberg was built into the very walls of Huangjin Zhongxin, raised when Daweizu constructed the capital. If--God forbid--the rebels had reached the walls and Aerlu’or had wished to, he could have thrown open the gates of Konigsberg and allowed the rebel armies direct access to the city.

Moshan made the mistake of trying to explain this to Aerlu’or himself.

“You’re lying!” the young boy screamed. “I can’t believe you! I defended you, Mo-mo! They told me that you were a traitor and I told them you couldn’t be, you’d never! But you are, aren’t you? I didn’t DO anything! I HELPED you, I sent soldiers to the army just like Siaugu asked.”

Moshan’s eyes moistened. “I am sorry, little brother,” he said softly. “It’s simply too dangerous. If everything could go as I wished, I would never do this. But there is too much at stake here to risk a weakness. I intend for the Teutonic Knights to retake possession of the castle. They will ensure that no enemies of Christ can ever be let in.”

“Too bad an enemy of the Khitan is already inside the city,” Aerlu’or cried out. And wiping tears from his eyes, the little boy ran from the room.

The brothers would never be close again.

“Huangdi Moshan,” Hubert d’Audley bowed, only slightly botching the pronunciation of his new lord’s title. He could not speak any Khitan, and had been forced to bring a member of Singer of Wittenburg’s court who knew both German and Khitan to translate.

“It is my honor to fulfill the promise of my predecessor,” the translator said on his behalf. “We are pleased to retake possession of Konigsberg and fulfill our mission to free the north of enemies to Christ, and to defend your person.”

“I lost my brother in exchange for providing you this castle, Hochmeister,” Moshan sighed, watching the thousands of Teutonic knights begin marching into the fortress. “I am making enemies faster than I can reconcile with any of them. Defending the walls will not, I think, be what you need to most concern yourself with. Watch for knives in the back first. All the enemies you will ever need to fear are within the walls, not without.”

Which finally left nothing but Siaugu.

“HOW COULD YOU DO SUCH A THING?!” she screamed, throwing items haphazardly around their chambers in fury. “YOU GO OFF ALONE AND BETRAY US ALL, WITHOUT A SINGLE WORD TO ME? AND WORSE, YOU TAKE MY OWN SON TO BAPTISE WITHOUT TELLING ME WHY? YOU MADE THAT CHOICE FOR HIM!”

“You have betrayed us! I can’t believe it. I shouldn’t have defended you, I should have LET THEM WALK INTO THIS CITY UNOPPOSED! They were right all along,” she cried, alternating between sobs and shouts. “At least when they killed me I would not have to bear the shame of a husband whose madness declares my holy birth a sin to be embarrassed of!”

“Siaugu…” he began plaintively, and she rounded on him in a fury.

“DON’T SPEAK MY NAME, MONSTER!” she shouted, tossing a pillow at him that slammed him squarely in the face. “I cannot believe I gave you children! I cannot believe I thought you were… CUTE! You have… you have… you’ve ruined EVERYTHING! NOTHING will be the same again! We will NEVER be strong again, always a slave to some western lord we have never even seen. TENGRI ABOVE, I wish I were dead,” she shrieked.

The Huangdi sighed. “That isn’t how it works,” he said softly. “I would never give up our independence. I still rule, and even if I were excommunicated the Pope cannot take that away from me. I spoke to Urban for many days, and he agrees that those children of incest bare no shame, sin, or responsibility, so long as they do not commit incest themselves--”

“That’s too bad, cousin,” she sneered.

Moshan reddened. “We are distant enough relations to adhere to scripture,” he insisted lamely.

“Convenient,” she snorted, curling up defensively on the bed, too high for Moshan to reach without climbing.

“Siaugu,” Moshan said, trying a new tack. “I need you. You know that’s true. I can’t manage the lords without you. I was terrified of exactly this response, but I should have told you anyway; I am truly sorry I didn’t. But it’s done now, and I will not change my mind. I want you to join me. I do not want to go without you.”

She wiped away a tear and hugged her legs close to her protectively--Moshan pretended not to notice. “You should have thought of that before you decided to take my son and make his decision for him.”

“If I did not baptize Jiesu now, it would have been more difficult to do so in the future. I should have told you, but there was a true reason why I did it.”

“That changes NOTHING,” she insisted, growing angry again. “What use is there in saying ‘I had a reason?’ I wanted you to be TRUTHFUL with me, not hide away like a frightened boy!”

Moshan bit his tongue--because she was right. He had evaded this for weeks after the rebellion was over, because he was afraid of how she would respond.

“I can only apologize, and tell you truthfully that I don’t want to walk this path without you. Please, Siaugu. I will buy you the most beautiful baptismal dress, confirm you as Regent for myself and our children, give you the right of alms-giving to all the poor--whatever you want.”

For a tantalizingly long time, Siaugu considered it. She looked at Moshan not with hate but with a long, steady consideration. She was close--so close--to accepting his offer.

“I will not betray Daweizu, my parents, or Diluguin,” she said finally. “He is all I have left, since you have taken Jiesu from me. I cannot see what you have done as anything less than an insult to our ancestors. I will not join in that.”

They were both quiet for a long time before she finally spoke again. “I will give you a final night as my husband, for the sake of the good days we once had. And then I am leaving.”

Chapter 22: The Pale Khitan, Pt. V - Faith and Family

Chapter Text

Siaugu’s refusal to convert, especially after being so very close to agreeing, sent Moshan spiraling into a depression. She moved out of his quarters in the Imperial Palace and in with her mother, Suirgen, in Trakai. With her went Diluguin, who, in place of Aerlu’or, had become a focal point in discussions of a successor to Moshan. He was being raised as an arch-Tengrist, and Siaugu would not allow Moshan to see him. He could have forced the matter, but to have to do so at all would make his rule seem weak at a point in time where it was critical that he give off the appearance of being a strong ruler.

Moshan did everything he could not to dwell on what had occurred between himself and Siaugu, and consequently threw himself into his work. There was much to be done, including finding every scrap of documentary evidence there was that Daweizu had not intended the Khitan to practice incest, and constant communication with the Pope preparing for his arrival and the new set of agreements between the Khitans and Catholicism that would redefine the position of the Jin Khidan Zhou within Europe.

Maurikios, however, had other ideas of what should be done.

Although it had been almost half a decade since he had lived within Greece, Maurikios still received word from members of his father’s court, and a few other friends and trading contacts. In April of 1258 he had heard rumors that the Empire was suffering from mass revolts, which he confirmed by late June of that year: a Sunni rebellion had recaptured much of Anatolia, and the Empress had once again isolated herself in Constantinople, abandoning an ongoing war.

“Moshan,” Maurikios told him when he met with him in early July, “there may never again be such an opportune moment to strike. My aunt is distracted with foreign war, and the Empire, I am told, is on the verge of collapse within Anatolia. If we don’t move now, it might be too late for me to save it. But the sooner I am enthroned, the sooner I can begin my own conversion efforts and restore the strength of Rome.”

But Moshan shook his head. “It is too dangerous,” he insisted. “I have only just come out of this war, and the entire realm is in tatters. The Jin Khidan Zhou needs time to recover to restore its strength--”

“Moshan,” Maurikios said gently, “your realm will never be strong again.”

The Huangdi recoiled as if struck, but Maurikios continued, softly but insistently.

“The might of the Jin Khidan Zhou will not be recovered, not in your lifetime. You must realize that. You have chosen the noblest path, but not the safest. You are going to spend your days trying to convert your people and fighting them to do it, just like I am. Your lords will despise you, rebels will burn your fields, your children will plot against you--this is the dishonor which your honor has purchased. It is inevitable. Don’t while away your life and my own waiting for strength that won’t come.”

Moshan opened his mouth to speak, and found that he could not. He sat quietly for a very long time, trying to shove down the fear that threatened to rise up within him. Because he realized Maurikios was right: his Jin Khidan Zhou would never be like what he had known as a boy. It would always be fighting itself, never whole, never strong.

“Take the army, róngyù de Qìdān. It is as much yours as it was ever mine; I give it to you freely,” he said.

“And I will use it well, brother,” Maurikios replied.

Moshan had told Maurikios from the very beginning that he could not become involved in his dispute for the throne of Rome; the army of the Jin Khidan Zhou would be provided to him for his use, but Moshan would not come himself. This conflict had to be, as far as appearances could be maintained, an internal dispute between Maurikios and his aunt Marina. Of course, the Prince leading an army of Khitan men given over to his command would still be an obvious sign of total support from Moshan, but the absence of the Huangdi in the field would make it easier for the Khitan participation in the war to be ignored over the years, and for relations between the Greek and Khitan people to remain warm--at least, so Moshan hoped.

As such it was Maurikios who declared to his aunt, via messenger, that he was intent upon deposing her and ending her rule--not Moshan. And, likewise, it was Maurikios who met with the sergeants of the Army and informed them that they were being called up once again to perform the impossible.

“I find it hard to think the Huangdi gave you control of the whole damned army while he still has the traitors locked up in this very city,” one particularly grizzled sergeant named Muruor told Maurikios bluntly.

“He had to be persuaded,” Maurikios admitted, speaking loudly enough for the other sergeants to hear. “But he’s decided that my service these past five years earned me a favor, and I asked the right to take you fine men on a pleasant trip south.”

Muruor smiled, a gruesome thing with half a mouthful of missing teeth. “I always wanted to see Contantinople myself, xuǎnzé de xiōngdì. Happy to go.”

While Maurikios organized the levy, Moshan sent to him his two best commanders to lead his flanks: Robin and the Hochmeister of the Teutons, Hubert.

“He needs to learn Khitan, and you taught me the best way to teach someone is to place them in the army and tell them they’d better learn quickly or risk dying,” Moshan quipped.

But in just a few days Maurikios had bidden his friend and brother farewell for the moment, and Moshan was alone again.

It was the first time in years that Moshan was free of any immediate concerns. There were still things to do, of course, chief among them poring through the documents of the founding days of the Jin Khidan Zhou looking for records which would support Moshan’s suspicions about the kinship clause and Agdji II’s perversion of it. But that was study, which Moshan actually found relaxing. With his rebellious vassals under guard and no immediate threat evident, at first it was peaceful.

But the isolation soon began to creep in and make itself known. The palace was quiet without Siaugu and Diluguin, Aerlu’or and Maurikios; many were dead from the recent uprisings, and more viewed Moshan as a traitor. He had to be careful even among the bureaucrats, and the Dominicans he had brought with him had begun to run an inquisition within the Khitan court to root out any disloyal elements--as if there weren’t threats all around him.

As the depression began to take root all the more, news reached the capital that twisted the knife further still: on their last night together, he and Siaugu appeared to have conceived a child. She was pregnant.

He send messengers with gifts and apologies, begging her to return. She gladly assented--but only, she said, if he would end his childish nonsense and return to the ways of Daweizu.

“Otherwise,” the meticulously perfect characters of her note read, “I do not ever intend to return to you, nor to let you take this new child from me as you did Jiesu.”

Maurikios heard the news about Siaugu while the levies were mustering in Vladimir Volynsky, and he grieved for his friend, but there was nothing he could do. The time where he was servant to Moshan had passed: forever friends and brothers, both by choice and now by blood, the time had come for Maurikios to take up the claim which was his birthright. He felt more sorrow leaving the frosted plains of the southern Jin Khidan Zhou than all those years ago when he had first fled Rome. But waiting any longer would only make it all the harder, on both he and Moshan.

And so, on the 22nd of October 1258, the great march south began. A gravely weakened Roman Empire faced the ragged and tired levies of the Jin Khidan Zhou, which had barely known peace for the last half-decade. The contest was not equal, yet neither was it much in the favor of Maurikios and the Khitan army. Rome was not some backwards realm, but the heart of power in the east, a state which the Khitan themselves feared and respected. They risked everything, down to their historic friendship with Rome and the Greek people, by fighting on Maurikios’s behalf.

And yet, like Maurikios himself, they made no complaint. He had fought alongside them loyally, and this was the reward he asked for. It would have been nigg*rdly for the army, even exhausted as it was, to deny a brother his pay.

On January 6th, in the midst of winter and with the breeze from the Black Sea chilling the Khitan to their bones, they arrived on the furthest edge of Roman power: Konstantia, Rome’s northeastern frontier within Europe. Now it was to be the first time ever that Khitan swords were turned on their brother Greeks in battle.

The coming of Maurikios was met with vastly different reactions between the peasantry and the nobility.

Tired of the constant military defeats and court cronyism which characterized the rule of Marina, by-and-large the peasants welcomed Maurikios and his Khitan army with open arms, even after they realized that Maurikios had really converted to Catholicism as the court propaganda had suggested. Was an incompetently-led and ever-shrinking Empire worth the cost of a mass? They would rather have security and Catholicism than proudly stick their heads out to be lopped off by the enemies which surrounded the Empire on all sides. And, of course, it helped that their friends the Khitans had given Maurikios their stamp of approval, and that they behaved honorably to even those peasants who occupied the towns and fortresses which they were forced to conquer on their campaign.

The nobility, conversely, were crushingly hostile to Maurikios’s coming. Most of the men of the court had, at one time or another, enjoyed favors from Marina, either political or physical; this is why she was graced with the epithet ‘the Great’ despite spending the majority of her reign in debauchery and isolation. She was a puppet-Empress who was content to do nothing at all and allow the nobility whatever it wished, and to buy what little support she did need with her loins and lands. If she were removed and a mighty Emperor set up in her place, all of the freedoms they had enjoyed would be lost, possibly along with their lands, or even their heads--that would be far worse than simply becoming beholden to Rome.

As a result, Maurikios focused on the rulers who were most hostile to his reign, in order to limit the chances of resistance. After capturing a few border settlements in northern Bulgaria as points of retreat, the Prince ambitiously shifted targets: to Thrake, directly northwest of Constantinople. If it could be captured and utilized as Maurikios’s wartime seat, he would have a capital directly adjacent to his aunt’s, and force an open conflict with the Roman levies.

Back in the Jin Khidan Zhou, as Maurikios was marching south at great risk to capture Thrake, Moshan’s daughter was born.

Born in Trakai in Siaugu’s exile, the child was named Suirgen by her mother, to honor Siaugu’s mother; another sign that the Huangho would not part with her incestuous heritage. The child’s very name was an attack against Moshan’s ideals, and his enemies among the populace were overjoyed at the daughter’s birth, as this would allow for a ‘holy union’ between Diluguin and his little sister--if only, of course, Moshan could be removed.

Moshan sent a note to Trakai wishing his wife and the baby good health, but he said nothing else and received nothing in reply. It was clear that Siaugu really did not intend to return, and Moshan had nothing else he could think to offer her. Instead he simply went back to his studies and correspondence, readying for the conference that was to come.

Maurikios and the Imperial Army had been investing Thrake for almost two months and had successfully captured Arkadioupolis, allowing the Prince to set up a court and publicly declare himself Basileus, before the Roman levies finally arrived.

Marina, terrified that Maurikios’s capture of territory so close to Constantinople and the horrible conditions inside the city--which was being ravaged by plague--would encourage rebels within to open the gates without contest and allow him to topple her, ordered the army to immediately intercept and break Maurikios’s forces as soon as he reached Thrake. The Roman levies had been marching almost to exhaustion for over a month, but finally they arrived.

The Prince’s contacts had suggested that the Roman army totaled at most some 2,000 soldiers between the Empress’s forces and those of all of her vassals, so broken was the Empire. Yet this number proved to fall far short of the reality, as the Roman soldiers which Maurikios’s scouts frantically reported about totaled larger than the Khitan force at over 7,000 souls. Maurikios did not know from where Marina found the extra men, but they were enough to pose a true threat, and they arrived suddenly enough that no preparations could be made save to scout out good terrain.

Maurikios chose to defend on a narrow peninsula that jutted between the large Evros river and its tributary, the Eryinis. Rivers lie to both the east and west, protecting against a flank, and the Imperial Army could reposition at need to block any fording which the Roman levies might attempt. Barring the arrival of an enemy force from the north unlooked-for, it was the best possible position.

For his simplicity and single-minded loyalty to the Empress, Euphemios Tagorri was often referred to as Marina’s Husband--at first glance what might seem as a compliment for a loyalist, but in reality a backhanded jab; Marina was not faithful to her men, and to be called a husband to the Empress was at once to be called gullible and a cuckold.

Stupid and inflexible but well-trained in the art of war and cruelly brutal, Euphemios was just the next in a long line of Doux whom Marina had flattered and favored into serving her ends. Specifically, Euphemios was a rebel-breaker: when a well-connected Strategos tired of the Empire’s weakness or a band of peasants fuming against corruption cropped up, Euphemios was sent in to cut them down. His simplicity ensured he would never be the best of commanders, but his fierce loyalty ensured that he would never join the rebel forces.

Unfortunately for Marina, her incompetence had left her with few friends. Oh yes, the lords of the realm wanted her to remain in power, but they were not fond of her, merely fond of the power her laziness assured them. She could trust few of them to remain by her side in a pinch, if they faced grave danger or a convincing bribe. If she could have trusted better commanders to send against her nephew, perhaps matters would have turned out differently. If it had been Maurikios from five years prior, it certainly would have.

But, even though the Roman army was almost as well-trained as the Khitan army was, sending a child like Euphemios against the warlord that Maurikios had become was asking to be punished.

When Euphemios’s army crashed straight into the Evros to charge Maurikios’s line, it was already over. Exhausted from their march and waterlogged from the crossing, the Roman army faced Khitan soldiers who barely even reacted when their fellows were cut down.

“Xuǎnzé de xiōngdì!” they cried as one as they hewed down the attacking Romans.

Terrified of the stalwart Khitan and utterly baffled about how to assault Maurikios in his highly-defensible position, Euphemios had withdrawn by mid-July, leaving 4,000 corpses on the field. The Roman army proved itself well-equipped and well-trained, as even so incompetently led it had cut down almost a thousand Khitans, more than had died in the entire Polish Uprising. But the loss of so many Roman troops, as well as the full capture of Thrake, as good as ended the conflict. Tired of the Empress’s incompetence and fearful about the danger posed by having a pretender ruling from right outside the city walls, the gate commanders within Constantinople communicated to Maurikios as early as August that they would be willing to open the gates and allow him to enter the city as Basileus.

But Maurikios was not yet prepared to do so. Knowing Euphemios’s loyalty, as well as fearing the threat of the army melting away into the countryside to act as partisans--lessons from the Polish uprising--Maurikios tracked down Euphemios once more, who gave battle at Odessus, in the Tourma Krounoi.

In this battle Euphemios had the better terrain, defending on the far side of a river. Yet he did not fight over the ford and allowed Maurikios to form up his forces on the bank, hoping to crush them between his defenders and the river and drown them. This was a solid plan in theory, but disastrous in practice; Maurikios was not so foolish as to fall for such a trap, nor was the Imperial Army sufficiently short of numbers for the smaller Roman army to press them so hard. Again Euphemios was overconfident, and suffered the consequences of that overconfidence, again quitting the field after losing half his men.

With the Doux of Diocleia no longer a threat, Maurikios finally rode back to Constantinople, and his crown.

The reign of Basileus Maurikios II is traditionally dated to October 29th, 1259: the day after he defeated Euphemios’s army in the field for the second time, and began his victorious march to Constantinople. This is because, although Maurikios would not actually enter the capital until November 3rd, by the 29th word of his victory at Odessus had reached Constantinople by sea, and Marina knew that her defeat was inevitable. On the 29th she abdicated the throne and fled west with her children, the Ecumenical Patriarch, and what sycophants she could take with her to her seat at Thessalia, in northern Greece.

Marina was thus not captured or imprisoned by Maurikios, and remained at large: a landholder of significant power within the Empire, with many of the ill-gotten fiefs which she had “inherited” as Empress still at her disposal. Unlike in many other such civil wars, however, Marina was not considered a threat by Maurikios. In her youth she had been an amazing woman; at first she was well-liked by all, and Maurikios had even supported her bid to overthrow his father. But power had not sat well on her shoulders, and as the years passed she had given herself over to debauchery, greed, and uncontrolled paranoia. In the end she had ruled only through use of her wiles and brutes like Euphemios; there was no longer a base of supporters which she could draw upon to threaten her nephew’s rule. Marina’s time was at an end, and Maurikios was content to allow her to live out the rest of her days, unmolested but irrelevant.

Maurikios was the first Emperor to bear that name in almost 700 years, Maurikios I having been executed in a palace coup in 602 AD. That Maurikios, like Maurikios II, was a skilled warrior, and he had extended the borders of the Empire, north, east and west; it was a worthy legacy to succeed to.

Yet despite all of the great accomplishments of Maurikios I, Maurikios Komnenos was the more important Basileus by far, simply for what he was. A Roman Catholic who had been welcomed into a Constantinople from which the Ecumenical Patriarch had fled, Maurikios II represented the beginning of a long, slow change within the Empire. It would take decades, centuries perhaps, for it to reach its fruition. But, having started, its success was now all but inevitable. Like the single pebble which starts a great rockslide, the coming of Maurikios II to the throne of the Empire ended Roman pretensions to being isolated and unassailable, a hermit realm within the heart of Christendom. Diplomatic contact was rudely and suddenly thrust wide open to the rest of the Catholic world, and the Roman nobility were forced to contend with the reality that untangling the connections they found themselves forming was all but impossible. And outside their borders--and, increasingly, within--it was a Catholic world.

When Maurikios tearfully parted from the Imperial Army, he was given one last gift, a secret which Moshan had prepared for him in the event of his victory. It was a black standard, upon which, in golden thread, “xuǎnzé de xiōngdì, róngyù de Qìdān” had been written in precise Chinese script. Maurikios adopted it as his personal standard, as well as the standard of any children he should have of Baisbun: sons of both east and west, merged into a greater whole.

It is bittersweet to think that the first man to embody Agdji's vision for the Khitan was not a Khitan at all, but a proud Greek Prince who saw Agdji's dream more clearly than any Khitan yet had.

When Urban IV heard the news that Constantinople had opened the gates to Maurikios and the Ecumenical Patriarch had fled, he ordered an entire month of feasting and celebration throughout the entire Christian world. The Schism was finally ended.

Of course, this was premature, and very wishful thinking. Although the Greek peasantry of the Empire seemed more amenable than not to the possibility of converting--after all, the differences between Orthodox and Catholic Christianity were still very minor by the mid-13th century--many Roman nobles refused to even contemplate it, and considered the Pope’s declaration that the Schism had been mended insulting, grounds for resistance against the “unjust imposition of a puppet of the Roman Patriarch.”

But the reality was that the Ecumenical Patriarch, the only figure who might have been able to actually organize such unified resistance, was universally acknowledged as a wicked man unworthy of the cloth, and especially unworthy of such high office. He had been installed as a pliant Patriarch through the machinations of Basilissa Marina in order to stabilize her rule, yet now the appointment of this sinful and cowardly man was of utmost threat to Orthodox Christians everywhere. Relatively young and healthy, it did not seem likely the Patriarch would pass away any time soon, yet for so long as he lived his foul behavior was sure to sour many Orthodox to supporting any unified call to resistance, while his preaching for unity fell largely on willfully deaf ears--who would follow the call of a debaucher's puppet?

When Rome formally declared Orthodoxy a ‘vile’ heresy, a threat to Catholicism which the Pope authorized military action to suppress, Maurikios surprised the entire Empire by--only a few weeks after being named Basileus and still completely unsecure in his reign--echoing the Pope’s statement and acknowledging that Constantinople also viewed Orthodox Christianity as a dangerous heresy, “with no place in modern Christian brotherhood.”

Whatever Maurikios’s exact skills were, whatever he had done in the five years he had been absent from the Roman Empire, two things were known: he had the clout within the Jin Khidan Zhou to personally commandeer the Khitan Imperial Army, and he was skilled enough in war that he had been able to trounce the Roman levies that had stood against him even when outnumbered. Although his reign was insecure, many within the Empire were not willing to trifle with an Emperor who could call the Khitans down at will. Though for decades the Jin Khidan Zhou had been weaker than the Empire, the memory of the immense power wielded by the Khitans in Agdji’s day was more fresh in the Roman Empire than anywhere but the Jin Khidan Zhou itself.

So, facing threats of violent suppression, many peasants and nobles simply converted in mass baptismal ceremonies that took place across the Empire rather than risking a hostile response from Constantinople. More, by far, did not; there was still destined to be strife in the future of the Roman Empire, much as there was to be in the Jin Khidan Zhou. But, unlike in the realm of the Liao, there was at least some acceptance within the Roman Empire that this was an eventuality which had come to pass, and they simply must accept it.

When Moshan heard the news that Maurikios had proved triumphant, it was as bittersweet a moment for the Huangdi as it was for Maurikios when he left the Jin Khidan Zhou behind. His friend and brother had claimed his birthright, and Catholicism was so much stronger for it. But the Jin Khidan Zhou was noticeably less, with Moshan’s greatest general never to return, and Maurikios and Moshan not to meet again save at the rare times they could spare--at a coronation, a feast, a hunt. After five years of spending almost every day in close proximity, it was difficult for both to unlearn the routines which they had become accustomed to.

For Moshan, this was the last straw. He could not handle losing Maurikios and Siaugu at the same time; he was awash in boredom and isolated in the Imperial Palace. He needed voices and people around again, more than just little Jiesu.

As the new year turned, Moshan penned a missive to Siaugu apologizing again for his actions and begging her to come to Huangjin Zhongxin. He did not request that she bring their daughter Suirgen--he knew that she would not. All he asked was her presence, to hear him one more time on the matter of the future of the realm.

And, to his surprise, she did come. She was even cooler now than she had been when she left; time, and perhaps the pregnancy and birth of their child without him, had taken a further toll. Her sorrow and shame had chilled to anger in the two years it had been since she had last seen him, and she made no pretentions of wishing to listen to anything he had to say that was not “I renounce Catholicism.”

And so, out of respect for her impatience, Moshan moved right to the heart of the matter which he wished to discuss. Summoning a servant from the hall into the lavish meeting room where he and Siaugu sat (she on the fully opposite side of the room from him), he brought forth the Spear of the Destroyer--Agdji’s weapon.

“I would like for you to kill me,” he told her.

Her eyes widened when she saw the spear, and positively bulged when she heard her husband’s words. “You WHAT?” she hissed.

“I have had two years to think on what happened,” the Emperor said mildly. “You are right in everything you said, especially that I brought undue shame to you. I still believe there is no shame or sin in your birth, but I never tried to explain that to you before I sought out conversion. I treated you unkindly, and I cannot change that. What I can give you is the chance for you to redeem yourself.

“I am giving you the Spear of Daweizu,” he continued, gesturing grandly to the weapon to his right, still born by the silent servant he had ushered in. “I am too small to use it regardless; whatever your choice, it goes to you. But, if you wish, I will allow you to slay me with it and mark me as an enemy of all Khitan. I am tired of living without friends, but most especially tired of living without you. If you kill me, you will be forgiven by Tabuyen, and our children will be safe. It will spare you your shame by removing me.”

“Moshan…” she muttered, shifting uneasily. “I… I could not. I couldn’t accept it. It’s Daweizu’s weapon! What’s gotten into you?”

“I told you, Siaugu: I’m tired. The spear is yours, whether you want it or not. From now on, you are in control of whom is marked an enemy to all Khitan. All you need to decide is whether you want to use it here today.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, and for a little while, she was silent--seriously considering, Moshan knew, whether to kill him. But in the end she shook her head violently, and, sobbing, cried out “No! No, no, no! I can’t kill you, I can’t do it.”

“Then will you come back to me?” he pressed her. “I love you, Siaugu. I NEED you, you and the children, here with me. I am losing my mind without you. You will always have the Spear; if you think I make even the slightest wrong decision, you can kill me where I stand. And any courtier that insults your birth as well.”

She laughed grimly, hugging her knees to her chest once more, sad and defenseless. His heart ached that he did this to her.

After a very long time, she finally spoke. “I'll need that baptismal dress,” she said softly.

With Moshan and Siaugu reconciled, she and his children returned from Trakai to Huangjin Zhongxin. Diluguin would not speak more than a few words to him, his mind poisoned by the two years away and the dreams put in his head of becoming an all-powerful monarch and crushing the west, but Suirgen was a happy baby whom Moshan was glad indeed to meet.

Most importantly of all, however, with their reconciliation it was safe for Moshan to leave the Jin Khidan Zhou, at least temporarily. He hastened from the capital to the Black Sea, where he boarded a pre-arranged Roman vessel and was whisked to Constantinople just in time to witness the coronation of his good friend.

Moshan and Maurikios embraced before all of the dignitaries there, a tearful and heartfelt reunion for the two men after almost two years apart. Maurikios attempted to give Moshan gold to repay the use of his army, but the Huangdi flatly refused, which greatly increased his already soaring opinion among Catholics.

But not all in Constantinople was as joyous as the feasts in the palaces would suggest. Although Moshan returned to the Jin Khidan Zhou unaffected, the Empire was going through its own version of the Khitan Great Plague that had occurred 15 years earlier, when three different plagues ripped through Huangjin Zhongxin and gutted the populace, as well as claiming the lives of over a dozen Yaerud, the Lord Regent Ago among them.

Although Moshan was unscathed, Maurikios took ill just days after the festivities came to a close.

When Moshan returned to Huangjin Zhongxin, little Jiesu was the first to run out and meet him. Gripping his father tight (frustratingly, the boy was already almost as tall as him), he begged the Huangdi to tell him everything of Rome that he could.

Jiesu was not brilliant like Moshan was, or as Moshan’s father Diluguin had been; Moshan knew this. Things did not come easily to him as they so often did to either Moshan or his own father, and that made raising the child difficult for him. Diluguin and Moshan had gotten along so well, perhaps, because they both had the same facility with new concepts; Diluguin might not have been of a scholarly bent as Moshan was, but both had an intrinsic ability to rapidly analyze and internalize the basics of something. Jiesu did not, and Moshan was not used to having to explain new things in such simple terms as an inquisitive little six-year-old required.

But, like Ago, this shortcoming was also something of a strength for Jiesu. Moshan and Diluguin, despite their best efforts, both succumbed to a certain degree of overconfidence; a certitude that their first impression of something was the right one. Jiesu had no such illusions, but he had the same burning desire to KNOW things just for knowledge’s sake that Moshan did. Especially at his age, he struggled at this. But he did not fear failure, instead fighting through his confusion and asking questions again and again until he understood something. Moshan was stunned when the little boy proved that he did not just know, but truly UNDERSTOOD the principles of the Rules of St. Augustine which governed the conduct of the Dominican Order. Before that day, he was ashamed to admit that he had ignored his little boy's intellect--never again did he.

“I will tell you everything,” Moshan promised him, “and you will recite it back to me to prove you will remember.”

Chapter 23: The Pale Khitan, Pt. VI - Second Galich

Chapter Text

Dozens if not hundreds of dignitaries would be back in Galich for talks on the terms of the Catholic Union, and as soon as Moshan had received word that Maurikios was to be crowned, work began on organizing the meeting itself. The groundwork was now well-laid, and with Maurikios having been made Emperor and the Schism having been declared healed, Rome would also have a voice at Galich--the last step which Moshan considered vital before the agreement was negotiated.

News of Maurikios’s illness devastated Moshan, who was terrified that it might not be measles at all, but the result of poison by the hostile Roman court. Between writing hundreds of letters and preparing a safe route of passage through Poland to the second Conclave, Moshan spent days praying for the health and safety of his friend.

Blessedly, the disease did indeed turn out to be simple measles, which Maurikios overcame. He also successfully put down an abortive rebellion in the Balkans against his rule, which solidified his control and gave the rebellious Doux who had been contemplating standing against him pause.

Between the instability in the Jin Khidan Zhou and Rome, there was no better time to host the talks, while matters were, briefly, calm. The date was very consciously set as the 1st of May: the anniversary of the original Conclave.

Despite being in large part initiated and organized by Moshan, the Second Conclave of Galich (better known to historians as the “Union of Galich” to differentiate it from the preceding meeting there) had the full backing of Urban IV and the Catholic Church. The Church was politically in the ascendant, and would have soon called its own series of conclaves if Moshan had not requested one; with Orthodox Christianity having begun its long death-throes following the ascent of Maurikios and Moshan’s commitment to end the Tengrist schism, Rome’s control of Christianity was again absolute. With millions of ‘ex’-heretics and thousands of new lords joining the fold, the enforcement of doctrinal norms--and of Rome’s absolute control over those norms--was critical to the Church. Moshan’s insistence that all of Christendom come together to agree to the Roman and Khitan entries to the fold and to discuss the future of Catholicism simply provided the secular backing which Urban needed in order to declare the Conclave universal.

To understand why this Conclave in particular was so critical, one must recognize the weakness of the Church prior to the victory of the Fifth Crusade in 1254. The last major Catholic success was in 1135, when the Second Crusade victoriously destroyed the Fatimid Caliphate and enthroned Robert de Normandie as King of Aegyptus, whose heirs (through the de Blois line) ruled there for almost 50 years prior to their collapse at the hands of Bedouin invaders from Cyrenaica. Catholicism had not held a true stronghold in the east since 1160, around which time both Aegyptus and the first Kingdom of Jerusalem began their collapses; although the later Third and Fourth Crusades to restore Jerusalem were declared successes, this was in name only, and the realms they created were both overrun by Muslims within a few short years.

The Church had been in a general retreat in the east ever since, with the Komnenid Restoration restoring pride of place to the Roman Emperor and Orthodoxy while Gregorius VIII’s decision to call for the first Conclave of Galich--although having expanded Christendom by millions of souls by accepting Tengrism as a Christian doctrine--cost the Church extremely in terms of primacy and doctrinal stability, and led to decades of infighting among its bishops over the contentious decision to accept the Khitans. Although Urban IV is today remembered as the most politically savvy and powerful of all the medieval Popes, even his rule did not begin strong, as Diluguin was able to extract significant concessions from him at the Conference of Prague. Although at the time these concessions were viewed as deserved, they contributed to the impression of a Church, and perhaps even a faith, which was firmly in decline.

By 1261, the Church had suddenly and decisively rebounded. The Fifth Crusade--although the Jerusalem it founded was also destined to be short-lived--was the first Crusade victory for Catholics since the days of Agdji the Great, and proved not only that victory was still attainable, but that the spears of the Jin Khidan Zhou could be counted on for future Crusades. The conversion of Moshan and Maurikios’s enthronement in Constantinople and the end of the Schism likewise did away with all the doctrinal instability of the past 200 years, eradicated the only two major Christian heresies, and gave Urban the right to extend his authority over a contiguous Catholic whole.

But the act of exerting that authority was critical; if Rome delayed, it was clear that Maurikios, at least, would be in danger of declaring primacy over the Church within his realm. In order to fight heresy in the east and ensure that Constantinople and Huangjin Zhongxin both equally submitted to Rome, Urban needed to have some public mechanism of enforcement against them. A public display of submission and negotiated terms of their conversions was the perfect way to quell dissenting voices, both those within the Church concerned over false conversions and those within the realms of Moshan and Maurikios by setting out the clear primacy of the Pope above all else.

Of course, for Moshan and Maurikios, Urban’s “fever-dream of supremacy,” as Maurikios put it, had little to do with their reasons for supporting the Conclave.

Both acknowledged that their predecessors had made mistakes--in Moshan’s case that (presumably) Agdji II had violated the terms of the first Conclave, and in Maurikios’s that prior Roman Emperors had supported the Schism and chosen a destructive and isolationist path in the first place. Both understood that they would lose some measure of their authority over the Church in their realms as a necessary condition of submitting to Rome and entering into the Catholic fold, and were willing to pay that price. But neither--not even Moshan, who tended to be more sympathetic to the needs of the Church (as well as, it must be said, being susceptible to pressure from his friend Urban)--intended to trip over themselves to bow to Rome.

For Maurikios, the intent of ‘Second Galich’ was specifically negotiation. Although his position was not strong, it was not weak either: he was ruler of a large realm, he had just crushed a rebellion against his rule, and his nobility had been viciously cowed through anti-Orthodox purges. Although it would now be impossible to renege on his position and return to Orthodoxy, he could still threaten the possibility of turning to some anti-clerical position like the Fraticelli, which had a small following within the Holy Roman Empire and was a point of clerical concern for the Church, thereby fracturing Christendom once again. While willing to pursue Christian unity, Maurikios was not motivated to convert through zeal but political calculus, and would only hold to Rome’s line if it was sufficiently beneficial for his realm, even if it was at the cost of his long-standing relationship with Moshan and the Khitans--such was the sad requirements of a ruler. Maurikios was not looking for his realm to be chastened for its long flirtation with heresy: he was looking for a deal.

Even for Moshan, the goal of the Conclave was not simply to kowtow to Rome. Although Moshan had been taught humility over the past five years and was willing to acknowledge the Pope’s spiritual supremacy in a way Maurikios was reluctant to, Moshan was still a ruler with political concerns, and those political concerns were deeply imbricated with his desire to seek spiritual redemption for himself and for the Khitan as a whole.

Moshan was willing to accept many things which Maurikios was not, including a direct Catholic presence in the administration of the Jin Khidan Zhou and a powerful landholding clergy within the realm--he even welcomed them. But any such conditions were predicated on concessions, including support for the conversion of the Jin Khidan Zhou, a restored acknowledgement of the determinations of the Conference of Prague (which established Diluguin and his heirs as Kings of Poland and Poland’s northwestern border at the Oder river), and enforceable, binding conditions set out in the agreement against Tengrists which Moshan could hold over his rebellious vassals.

As Moshan wrote to Urban in 1260:

“What Lord of Christendom has accomplished more on behalf of the Holy Church than I have? With all humility, nevertheless any must acknowledge that it has been centuries since another has done what I have done. First it was told to me that I must Crusade to save my soul and the souls of my people; this I accomplished victoriously. Then I was to convert, and this I did also; then, of my own volition, I enthroned Maurikios as Emperor, and exhorted him to end the Schism which has plagued the Faith for centuries, a blessed undertaking which now is well underway. The Church will always have a place within the Realm of the Golden Khitans, yet even though you are my friend and the Church my succor, know the limits of my indulgence. I have paid more personally than most realms have ever paid, and whatsoever I should pay next will be repaid in turn.”

Finally, aside from the terms of their realms’ conversions and full entry into Catholicism, both Moshan and Maurikios had shared concerns with many other Christian rulers which they were eager to discuss in council.

Although it was never discussed openly, the reality of the mercurial successes of the Catholic Crusades in the east weighed heavily on both Moshan and Maurikios. Both of their realms, to one extent or the other, relied on the stability of Christianity in the east: Maurikios’s directly as a Christian bulwark was desirable to ensure that another Second Righteous Jihad would not occur, the strain of which almost broke the Empire; and Moshan’s indirectly, as the Khitan alliance with the Roman Empire relied upon the strength and stability of Constantinople, which, in the face of constant Christian backsliding, was hard-pressed on its eastern border.

Although it was not a major concern for other rulers, Moshan was also extremely focused upon the survival of the grandson of Jochi Borjigin, Khutula the Posthumous, in the east; although the Golden Horde had been utterly broken by Diluguin, the survival of Khutula allowed the Khanate to recast itself in new shape, and having been raised among heretic Bolghars, Khutula had begun to spread his Islamic Kharijite faith throughout the steppe, including to nominally independent Khans who were willing to convert in order to earn the favor of the largest single tribal ruler on the steppe.

Finally, of interest to all Christians but especially to Guglielmo II of Sicilia was the fate of the Catholics within Aegyptus--by far the majority of the population--who had now been living under the Islamic yoke for nearly a century, as well as the imminent loss of many such souls to Islamic rule in Jerusalem. He called for a means to save these loyal Catholics from unjust domination.

By the will of the Pope, attendance at Second Galich was mandatory: every realm was required to send a clerical representative to participate in the debates, hear their conclusions, and return to their realms to share the findings of the Conclave and implement any reforms it determined. Where possible, it was encouraged that secular representatives accompany their clerical counterparts to represent their realms more completely. Even Orthodox priests--at least, Russian Orthodox ones, as by-and-large Russia was still occupied by pagans, and thus lacked most political representation outside of the Church--were encouraged to attend in the hopes that an agreement for reconciliation could be made between the Russian Church and Rome.

Unfortunately, Prince Demid Rurikovich, Lord of Chernigov and the last living male Rurikovich, had recently thrown off the Mongol yoke and brought hope to the Russians that a glorious period of restoration was upon them; most, consequently, refused the summons and instead swore loyalty to Demid and his chosen “Patriarch of the Rus.”

Although some of the smallest or most isolated Catholic realms either could not afford the journey or deemed it too dangerous to undertake, most complied with the wishes of the Pope and sent representatives, although almost universally those of the lower nobility declined to send separate agents and instead opted to permit the representatives of their lieges to speak for them. Undoubtedly this was at least in part due to costs, and the desire not to see their local bishops gone for what they expected would be years.

Moshan and Maurikios had of course already declared for the Conclave, although the Roman Empire was facing the prospect of another brewing civil war over the imposition of Maurikios’s authority as Basileus, and thus he made it clear that his attendance would be sporadic as he would often need to return to the City of the World’s Desire. During the periods he was absent, it was announced that he would be represented by Thomas, a lowborn seminary student whom he had installed as Bishop of the Hagia Sofia to rubber-stamp his decrees.

The Pope, who was somewhat frustrated that the Conclave was not taking place in Rome (and only agreed to Galich out of its symbolism, as well as the shared insistence of Moshan and Maurikios that they could not stray far from their realms during this critical juncture) made it clear that he might frequently need to return to Rome, and announced that his factotum, Cardinal Gilbert, would represent the Church if he was ever required to be absent. Gilbert held a prestigious double post (and consequently outsized influence), as he was both the Pope’s second and the King of France’s direct representative.

Christians in Jerusalem and Aegyptus--and, more specifically, their persecution at the hands of the Muslims, who it seemed that the Crusades could at best only push back for a decade before they crashed back in like a rush of water bursting a dam--were one of the most critical points of consideration for the Conclave, and their presence was most highly demanded. War in Jerusalem and the political subjugation of the last remnant of the Kingdom of Aegyptus to the Hunayn Caliphate precluded the direct political presence of these realms at the Conclave, however, and both were only able to send their clerical representatives.

It is worth noting, however, that the clerical representative of the “Emir of the Delta” was none other than his own child, Mu’adh Fudaylid, who had been granted the special authority of Prelate over all Catholics within the old Kingdom of Aegyptus. Although extremely young and clearly an appointment of convenience by the Pope, who wished to court the Emir closely to ensure that he did not convert to Islam, Mu’adh was a good Christian and well-liked. It was hoped that he could provide some assurances on behalf of his father that his father’s seat at Dumyat could be used as a beachhead for possible campaigns into the Egyptian interior.

Although unfortunately most Italic lords were not able to attend the Conclave--King Alfonso of Lombardia and King Mariano of Sardinia due to war, Doge Fedele of Venexia due to plague--the most powerful of the Italic Kings, Guglielmo de Hauteville of Sicily, was able to attend.

Guglielmo had inherited his throne at just over two years of age and had, against all odds, survived his extremely long regency and proven to be a popular and effective ruler. Rather than fight losing battles with the Kingdom of the Lombards as his predecessors had, Guglielmo had opted to launch attacks against the fractured and poorly-supported Muslims of North Africa, who had, following the collapse of the unified Almoravid Sultanate in the west and the rise of the Hunayn in the east, largely been left without strong protectors. This conclusion has already paid massive dividends for the young King, whose burgeoning empire in North Africa has allowed him to surpass Alfonso Sambonifacio of Lombardia in power (if not in wealth).

Guglielmo’s North African holdings directly border Aegyptus, and the Christians of Egypt are thus his natural allies against the Hunayn and in favor of his own conquests. As such, with Guglielmo comes Doge Jabir Ghatafan, a Bedouin lord whom Guglielmo established as hereditary Doge of Cyrenaica in order to use the profits of his commercial ventures to pay for the naval transports required for his conquests. Although it has been almost 50 years since Jabir’s family had practiced Islam, as Bedouins, historic residents of Cyrenaica and close neighbors to the native Egyptians it is hoped that Jabir’s insight will prove of assistance in planning the next Crusade.

One of the traditionally most friendly states to the Khitan has been the Kingdom of Hungary, sharing cultural ties, proximate geography, and even something of the same migratory history. Although there have been exceptions to this rule (the border wars between Djoborin and the Dukes of Ungvar, for example, or the threats of the mad warlord Zapolsky Zoltan during the reign of Diluguin), under normal circ*mstances the lords of Hungary have enjoyed warm relations and strong trade with the Khitan across the Carpathians, viewing them (rightly) as a major bulwark protecting the Magyars from invasion, and supporting them where possible as a result.

Since Zapolsky Zoltan had been overthrown and executed seven years prior and the Arpad Kings of Croatia had restored their rule over Hungary, Moshan had hoped to see King Mozes at the Conclave to coordinate strategy against their shared problem of the It-Oba Khanate, unrepentant Tengrists who threatened the southern borders of both realms.

Unfortunately, Moshan’s concerns were well-founded. At the time the Conclave began Mozes was locked in a brutal war with the It-Oba over raids into Transylvania, as well as their persecution of Christians. Indeed, the war was so brutal--and the raids of the It-Oba so deep--that the passes over the Carpathians were deemed unsafe, and the fastest route to the Conclave of Galich was declared closed, requiring dignitaries to pass overland through Bohemia and Poland to reach Galich, a major inconvenience for what was already one of the most distant possible locations for an all-church synod.

Mozes did declare that he would attend the Conclave as soon as he proved victorious, but until then he was preoccupied entirely with the war. He did, however, send his brother Abel as his representative in the interim.

Politically, the Holy Roman Empire stood to lose the most as a result of Second Galich. Even before the formalization of the Great Schism in 1054, the German Emperors had enjoyed mounting support from Rome as a counterweight to the increasingly isolationist and weakening eastern Emperors; since the Schism, that support had only grown. To a point.

Since Konrad von Hohenstaufen had declared himself King of Lombardia in 1128, de facto declaring independence from the Reich, the Empire had been on the decline. After the loss of its most prosperous province a series of revolving-door Emperors followed, not a single one of which ruled longer than 11 years. Out of twenty-two Emperors, ten had seized power through hostile means, and three had even seized power, been deposed, and then seized power once more before being deposed again. Prior to the ascent of Emperor Spitimir, son and heir of his father the Kaiser Boleslaw, there had not been a dynastic succession in the Empire since the ascent of Heinrich von Limburg, son of his father and predecessor Walram, in 1138, near the beginning of the decline.

The natural result of this infighting was dysfunction among the Imperial levies--at times, the Emperor was so personally weak that Gryfita Poland could raise larger armies. This led to significant losses against Capetian France; at the beginning of the decline the Empire controlled Burgundy and threatened Flanders, but it was now France which was securing Burgundy and even threatening control of de jure Imperial land in Northern Lotharingia. With mighty Lombardia to its north and the growing power of the Kingdom of Sicily to its south Rome no longer looked to the Reich for its defense, and now the Eastern Empire was seeking to be returned to the fold and demanding to be recognized as the sole successor of Rome, at a time when the Reich was clearly expendable.

It is all the more interesting, then, that at this critical juncture the Empire sent not a single political representative.

Part of this was due to a series of political quirks--a conflict between Spitimir and Duke Gunther of Holstein drew the Kaiser’s attention, while the largest landholder and only other King in the Empire, Henrik II of Friesland, was preoccupied with a major conflict against Thiebaut of France. Both rulers also happened to have close relations in the Church whom they trusted to represent their interests and could send as clerical representatives: Spitimir’s brother Eberhard, and Henrik’s son, also named Henrik.

Still, there were trusted vassals who could have been sent in addition to the clerical representatives, and they were not. The decision not to send any political representatives whatsoever was highly unusual given the stakes, even despite the strong rule of Spitimir, whom most historians agree was the most competent Kaiser to rule the Empire in at least 150 years. Nothing less than the titular basis of the Kaiser’s rule lay on the line.

Although there is no consensus, some historians suspect that Spitimir had simply accepted that his title would be declared defunct, and was attempting to do everything he could to solidify his rule in the interim, in order to ensure that he could use force to hold the Reich together even without the support of the Church or a legal basis for rule--this is why he was focused on shutting down the relatively minor rebellion in Holstein over and above being personally present at the Conclave, because he did not believe his presence would sway the decision of the Pope, who no longer had any need of the Reich, but would be desperate to court the favor of Maurikios.

In Scandinavia, there were but two players of interest: King Inge of Norway and King Asser III of Denmark. Both had history with the Khitan--Inge’s son Ivar was married to Moshan’s half-sister Telge, and Asser III had sent a representative to the Conference of Prague and been rewarded with influence in Pommerania as part of the treaty. Yet, of the two, Asser was by far the more powerful, having forced Sweden to declare its subservience to the Danish crown, de facto entering into a personal union with Denmark (although there was technically still an elected Swedish King, he was referred to in Danish documents as the ‘Prince of Sweden,’ and his duties were more akin to a governor. The position was also not hereditary, while Danish control over Sweden was).

For the moment, neither Asser nor Inge were able to attend, as plague was raging in Copenhagen and Inge was involved in a minor conflict with a rebellious vassal in Throndelog, but both declared their intent to travel to the Conclave when circ*mstances permitted.

As far as most delegates were concerned Inge was more than welcome, but they would be best-pleased if the plague lasted long enough for Asser to be kept away. A robust, well-read and exceptionally talented ruler in his youth, his paranoia had gradually stolen his sanity over the years. Although still possessed of towering intellect--indeed, he was possibly one of the most naturally intelligent individuals of the entire medieval period--Asser is now a mad butcher consumed by constant fear of foul plots and traitors in his midst, and his brutality against these suspects is commensurate with his vast intelligence.

The British Isles were a morass of infighting and dysfunction in the early 1260s. King Edward de Mandeville of England was a brutal kinslayer who had executed no less than 19 of his own vassals, and had been excommunicated at the request of none other than Moshan when he had heard of the man’s crimes during his travel to Rome for his coronation. Edward was locked in a war with Anselm de Blois of Wales, who, despite being less cruel than Edward, was still brutal at need, and proved it by capturing Edward’s son (also Edward), gouging out his eyes, and cutting off his legs. Anselm claimed cause of war as his excuse for not travelling--Edward told his bishops that any who went to the Conclave of “that bastard [Urban IV]” did so on pain of death, though the Archbishop of Canterbury did so regardless (and was executed upon his return, as promised).

Scotland had a baby (Fulk I) not even a year old on the throne, surrounded by vassals with claims on his title. All demurred from travel; each expected the others to move on the throne as soon as one of them left, and each refused to be left out of the chase.

Unusually, the most stable realm of the Isles was the least centralized: the Kingdom of Ireland, ruled since 1121 by House Ua Conchobair. Its current ruler, High King Diarmait II, was the beneficiary of decades of well-ordered rule by his predecessors, and boasted a tributary relationship with lords stretching from the southernmost tip of Ireland into Scotland and the surrounding Isles, the King of which, Amhlaibh III Crovan, recognized Diarmait’s supremacy.

It was thus Diarmait alone out of the lords of Britain who sent a representative, his tributary King Baetan of Deas-Mhumhain.

Diarmait’s decision to send a representative at all might, at first glance, appear unusual. After all, what benefit did Diarmait stand to gain? None of the political concerns associated with the Conclave were of interest to any British lords, nor was the status of the Khitan or Roman entries into the Catholic fold. As one of the most isolated Catholic realms, Ireland in particular was insulated from virtually all threat to Christendom, as well as any of the pressing political concerns which were to be addressed.

Yet the picture snaps into clear focus when one realizes that, though Diarmait had no personal reason to be involved in the Conclave, his family did have a stake: the Ua Conchobairs had, since 1240, also been Kings of Leon, and in that capacity their need was extremely dire.

Although the Almoravid Sultanate had broken apart in 1234 and had been on a steady decline since, it was not beaten. Though Lombardia and Navarre had been able to make significant gains in war against the Almoravids the other Iberian Kingdoms had been less lucky, and most had settled into a pattern of conquest, defeat, and reconsolidation in a vicious and neverending cycle. However bruised the Almoravids ever became, they were never able to be fully put down, at least by anything but the overwhelming might of Lombardia.

If matters continued in this way for long enough it would still go ill for the Iberian Kingdoms, yet it was thought that at least Lombardia would eventually prove victorious and drive out the Mohammedans. But in 1240, the foolish duch*ess of Burgos, Adosinda de Navarre, invited a Mongol mercenary into her service. That Mongol was Yesu Mongke Borjigin, son of Chagatai who was heir to Temujin himself. And, as soon as Adosina let down her guard, Yesu Mongke brutally sacked her capital, executed her, and settled into a reign of terror with his Mongol band, pillaging all the Christian lands around him in the name of his violent splinter sect of Islam.

This was the dire state of Iberia, which Diarmait was desperate to share with the rest of Christendom at the Conclave. Locked in neverending war with the Muslims to the south, the Iberian Kingdoms had, more than any other Christian realm, been forced to turn to the assistance of mercenaries, adventurers and holy orders to hold their own. Yet far more often than not these figures had proven unreliable, or outright false.

After the first Conclave of Galich the Iberian realms had been overjoyed, as extremely skilled and cheap Tengrist mercenaries became available for employ. Taken in by reports of Khitan honor and skill in arms, they believed that all Tengrists would prove as reliable. If only it were so!

Aragon was the first Kingdom to invite Tengri mercenaries to fight for it, but these mercenaries proved just as willing to raid the King’s own lands as those of his enemies. When he attempted to put a stop to it, his capital was sacked and he was captured, then subsequently forced to give the vile heretics a ducal title. Bereft of most of his lands and destitute, the King then had to mortgage his northern territories, as well as several castles in his own demesne, to the Knights Templar in exchange for a promise of safety, which they have subsequently refused to ever fulfill, claiming that they only agreed to defend the King if the Toqsoba attempted to revolt against him--they have never lifted a finger to stop their raids.

Every subsequent effort to use such mercenaries had ended in defeat at best, and a Yesu Mongke at worst. Between the Almoravids and the Toqsoba and Borjigin raiders, there had not been safe passes through which Christians in Iberia could travel east without being at the mercy of one of the three of these violent groups for decades, and every year Yesu Mongke especially expands his influence further, now capturing territory instead of simply sacking it.

With no safe routes through Iberia and the constant threat of war looming, Diarmait is among the only individuals who can send anyone to even represent the peninsula. Portugal and Aragon cannot send even clerical delegates, while Leon itself, although large and wealthy enough to send a delegate by sea in better circ*mstances, cannot afford to at this critical juncture due to an ongoing war with the Almoravids. Only Navarre is lucky enough to be able to send a representative immediately: Cardinal Ponce de Acuna, whose lands are sufficiently north of the raiders to be able to safely travel.

It is telling that the dire state of affairs in Iberia was not even considered when the political goals of the Conclave were being discussed. The Church’s focus had been on the east ever since the successful Second Crusade, and that eastern focus had only grown following the first Conclave. Lombardian victories in Aragon served to lull the Church into a false sense of certainty that the Muslims in Iberia would inevitably be defeated, a justification for their focus elsewhere. But now the reality of the near-collapse of the peninsula can, for the first time, be laid out in complete detail to an assembly of all Christendom. Without urgent support, the possibility existed that Christianity in Iberia could be snuffed out.

And, finally, there was Sieciech.

Sieciech Gryfita was the sole son and heir of Branimir II, the last King of Poland. A decade before, when Diluguin had conquered Poland, Prince Siechiech was smuggled out of the capital by his mother, the countess Stefana Gryfita, in order to establish a splinter realm on the Pommeranian coast with the goal of restoring Gryfita rule to Poland. Since that day Sieciech had been forced to endure many humiliations, including bending the knee to the Niklotid King of Wendland, a crown which the Gryfita themselves used to hold!

Still, the Gryfita were buoyed by their hope that they would be rewarded for their perseverance with a restoration of their crown. In reality, the Gryfita had Pommeranian roots and were always seen by the Polish nobility as incompetent foreign usurpers; when the time came for their rebellion against the Yaerud, the Poles chose a lowborn puppet, a bastard of the Gryfita (and that in name only), as their rallying figure rather than bow to the Gryfita, whom they hated nearly as much as the Khitan did.

Now, however, the two women who held stranglehold over the politics of Pommerania--the “queen mother” Countess Stefana and the “King’s” betrothed, his distant cousin the deformed hunchback Dobroniega of Hologost--believed that the time for the Gryfita restoration was at hand. Pope Urban IV had publicly announced that the terms of the Conference of Prague which had granted the Yaerud their claim on the Kingdom of Poland would be reviewed, and, were its overturned, it would be natural for the Kingdom to be restored to Sieciech, who was now nearly a man grown. With both a claim to the Kingdom of Poland and the Kingdom of Pommerania, should Poland be restored to the Gryfita their dynasty would stand poised to achieve what had always been their dream: the union of the realm of their conquest, Poland, with the crown of their birth, Wendland. To this end, both Sieciech and Dobroniega travelled to Galich.

From the very beginning, the tone of Second Galich was clearly different from that of First Galich. Indeed, from the moment when delegates to the Conclave entered Khitan lands, they were escorted by soldiers which Moshan had set aside for their protection. Although the Agdji Huangdi went to great lengths to make it appear as though these soldiers were merely an honor guard for esteemed guests, the reality quickly became apparent to even the least perceptive, as hateful glances and even outright hostility in the many towns the delegates passed through were only cowed by the presence of their armed guards. Although Poland was for the most part safe (save for the Duchy of Krakow, where Tengrists still held sway), once the delegates entered Sandomierz their guards urged them to move quickly, stop infrequently, and trust none met along the roads.

Even with the so-called “great rebels”--the strongest and most rabidly Tengrist vassals in the realm--imprisoned, the Jin Khidan Zhou was not safe for Catholics. Even Huangjin Zhongxin itself faced constant sectarian violence and required the garrison of the Teutonic Knights to maintain order. Galich was safe due to the presence of the Imperial Guard, but on the long roads from the border with the Holy Roman Empire down to Galich the presence of hostile saboteurs was anticipated.

Whether because Moshan was paranoid over nothing or because his decision to assign nearly 2500 men to the protection of those roads paid off, there were no attacks. But the very idea that the Huangdi of the Jin Khidan Zhou had needed to deploy his army to protect visitors in his own realm gave away that Moshan was not what any of his predecessors had been--despite his performance in the Crusade, this Huangdi was a weak one, unable to enforce his will upon his people.

Although Second Galich formally began on 1st May 1261, 58 years to the day since the first Conclave began, its first week was spent upon introductions, waiting for lagging delegates, and feasting and toasting the success of the Crusade and Moshan’s conversion. Although many questions were burning in the minds of those present, especially regarding the soldiers on the roads, politics at first were held in check.

Yet Maurikios, at least, would soon need to return to his lands, and he had constantly pressed the Pope to begin the Conclave in truth so that he could return to Constantinople, which was still being ravaged by plague and in dire need of his presence. By May 7th more time could not be wasted sitting idle, and Urban called the Conclave to full order.

“We gather here in the presence of God and the full Church of His Son,” the Pope began, “in what--although it has not been called such before!--is in truth the first Ecumenical Council of the entirety of Christendom in almost 400 years, since the Fourth Council of Constantinople in 870. Although we were not divided in truth until 1054, our faith had been shaken so much earlier. Through greed and the weakness of men, we found ourselves drifting apart, unmoored, nearly to our doom.

“Now, through the grace of God and our faith, near-disaster has been averted. This Conclave is called to join to the Catholic whole the schisms of the East and Northeast, the Orthodox and the Tengrist; and, through this dual joining, this reunion and new union, to restore what once was ours. The Mohammedan scourge, God’s punishment for our fruitless infighting and the greatest threat to His Kingdom, must be resisted by the harshest of means. This, too, we must decide upon here: how we might break these unrepentant heretics for all time, so that we might spread God’s Church over the whole of the Earth and bring forth glorious Rapture.”

Such an ebullient opening to the proceedings was rightly cheered, but not by all--Eberhard Premyslovci, the Holy Roman Empire’s delegate, stood against the raucous crowd and shouted them down. “So be it, so be it,” he cried, “and let us have it done! Let us not congratulate ourselves before the work is finished; in the name of Spitimir, Holy Roman Emperor, crowned as the heir of Rome by Urban himself, exemplar of a line of mighty lords of that same title unbroken for centuries, I call for the Eastern Emperor to cast aside his pride, admit the fault of his heresy, and beg forgiveness from this council!”

The ecstatic cheering which had reigned just moments before gave way to a grim quiet. The delegates had expected this, but not so quickly. All present knew it would not be so simple as a declaration of unity--there were real political and religious concerns to be addressed by these unions, and Eberhard, as the Holy Roman delegate, had decided to cut to the quick of it. Which Empire was to have primacy? Unaware as yet of the Khitan breach of the terms of the first Conclave, this was believed by almost all to be the most contentious issue of the entire council.

The Pope’s scowl was unmistakable, but he did not demur, instead standing again. “Stand forth Maurikios, Lord of Constantinople,” he said reluctantly, “and answer the accusations levied against you and your crown.”

As Maurikios stood and marched to the front of the hall, his Latin translator at his side, Urban was shaken by the sudden conviction that he saw the specter of Diluguin striding forth. Maurikios’s bronzed skin, black beard, and straight-backed height, so different from the appearance and bearing of Moshan, could have stood in for a portrait of Diluguin to the Pope’s eye. The wholeness of his being screamed confidence, grace, and--above all--power. Moshan was Diluguin’s son, but if he had lived to see him forged, perhaps the old Emperor would have called Maurikios the inheritor of his nature: an unparalleled warrior, union of wisdom and might.

The Eastern Emperor wore what some of the assembled delegates would have called pauper’s garb; excepting his rich purple cloak and the gem-encrusted crown of his station, he wore but thick riding boots, well-made but simple brown woolen trousers over which hung a crude and somewhat battered mail of chain, and at his waist hung a dull mace, clearly aged. Those who saw him at first snickered, but the few who knew something of the Basileus understood the message at once: he carried with him only what he had earned. The mace belonged to Leonardo II of Jerusalem, and was won by him on Crusade; his ragged clothes he had worn while living in the Jin Khidan Zhou; the chainmail he had taken from a dead Polish noble in the Rising; the crown was earned through his war of conquest and bequeathed to his hands by the Pope; and the cloak had belonged to his father, Andronikos II, and a few of the assembled had seen him wear it in life. It also did not escape those perceptive few to realize the implication of his dress: he had come dressed for battle.

As he took the dais to speak, it was immediately evident that there would be no submission. “I did not come here to beg,” the Basileus began. “I admitted fault already at Rome, where I took my catechisms and joined the faith. I am here to set right what has been for so long wrong.”

“The Barbarian,” Maurikios continued, to shocked gasps from the crowd, “demands apology for slights I was not alive to witness, yet offers none himself on the behalf of his lord. The pious Urban speaks truly when he says that it was greed and the weakness of men that split this Church, and did that not begin when, without consultation with my august predecessors, the Emperors of the East, the Western crown--the JUNIOR crown!--which lay unclaimed for centuries, was given to Charlemagne? He prides himself on centuries unbroken, yet has my lordship not lasted for millennia uninterrupted? Indeed, is it not older than Christ on Earth?

“My realm was young the day that Christ stood among us and said to his apostles, ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.’ To this Conclave I proclaim that the violation of this law is where the breach in our covenant began.

“I am not the ‘Lord of Constantinople,’ this insulting and petty moniker. I am Maurikius Komnenus Imperator! And as Emperor of Rome I admit these faults: that my predecessors turned inward and ceased communication with the rest of the Church; that they broke in finality with the Pope and allowed the schism of our faith; and that they, in their pride, believed themselves above God’s law and God’s unity.

“But I am not my predecessors. My state was at fault, not my person. Who was it who won you your Crusade but the two Emperors who stand here now among you? Who among us is not a Catholic? I have no further personal faults to beg forgiveness for. But there are faults still to be absolved, in this indeed we agree. And those faults lie with the Church itself.”

The assembled Bishops all but unanimously stood and cried outrage at the Basileus’s ‘heresy.’ Maurikios was used to the battlefield, and with his booming voice and the special construction of the Conclave hall which Moshan had built to amplify the voices of those upon the dais, he could have shouted them down. Yet his poor cowed translator could not have, and he was forced to wait for the outrage to quiet.

“If an Emperor of Rome is to admit fault for the failures of his predecessors,” he cried, “is the Bishop of Rome not capable of the same? Was it not wrong for the Catholic Church to forge the Donation of Constantine? All in the east know it for the fabrication it is. Was it not the fault of Leo III to use this false document to refuse to consult Constantinople before giving away a crown that was by right my predecessors’ alone to give? Was it not wrong for Leo to refuse to broker a true and lasting peace when Nikephoros, successor to the throne of Rome, humbly met with Charlemagne to resolve the issue of his ascent? Was it not, indeed, wrong for Urban to have referred to myself and my station now as being only the ‘Lord of Constantinople’?

“The Catholic Church has continually refused to acknowledge the true antiquity of my station, the name of which is emblazoned in the words of Christ himself. And I say again: there have been Bishops of Rome, twisted by greed and ideas above their station, who have given thought to political domination where none is to be had. Christ says that what is Caesar’s must be rendered unto him, and I say this--I am the only Caesar, for what was raised in the West was done so not merely illegally, but irreligiously in violation of this most basic tenet.

“The religious rule of Christianity belongs to the Pope, now and forever. But I am Caesar, and the political rule of Christendom is mine.”

If the outrage before was raucous, the explosive fury of the assembled delegates now veered into the violent. The Imperial guard was forced to swarm the dais to protect the Basileus as representatives from dozens of realms stood and threatened to rush the Emperor. Everyone was shouting, some for calm, some that the passage Maurikios quoted did not even mean what he believed it did, but most for excommunication at best--some cried for death and blood.

Moshan stood immediately to rush to calm the delegates, cursing furiously that the first day--the first hour, even--of real debate had already descended into such violent madness. He was jostled, pushed, and even tripped over as he fought his way to Maurikios, but finally, bruised and winded, he reached the defensive line of the Imperial Guard and they let him within the small circle of calm they were protecting.

“Shout my name, shout my name!” Moshan cried to Maurikios.

“MOSHAN! MOSHAN! MOSHAN!” Maurikios obeyed, his booming voice overwhelming the thunder of the chamber. The outrage subsided somewhat, enough for Moshan to step out of the ring of soldiers and address the infuriated crowd.

“Myself, the Basileus and the Pope will retire to discuss these claims. A clear list of demands, both from the Emperor to the Church and the Church to the Roman Empire, will be put together and brought before the Conclave to be debated. Tempers have IRRESPONSIBLY,” Moshan emphasized, not at all hiding his displeasure, “been raised. This Conclave was not called to subsume Christendom to any party. We will find common ground--it will be difficult, time-consuming and will leave few parties satisfied, but we will nevertheless find it. Please, give the three of us time to discuss. We will recess for today and return tomorrow.”

Remarkably, this calmed the violent crowd, at least enough that they begrudgingly disbursed. But now Moshan was left with the unenviable task of mediating the debate between the Pope and Maurikios.

“WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU THINKING?” Moshan shouted at the top of his lungs the moment that he, Urban and Maurikios entered the private room set aside for their deliberations. “I don’t care in the slightest how insulted you are by the Germans, that should not drive you to madness! You claim lordship over every Christian, including myself! Have you lost your mind?”

Maurikios bristled, and drew himself up. “I am not your slave, Moshan. The debts I owed you were paid. I love you like a brother and your people like my own, but you are new to Europe. My state IS Europe.”

“And you would sacrifice everything, EVERYTHING that we have worked for in the name of your petty pride?” Moshan shook his head, disgusted. “I cannot believe that you would be so foolish. You are my brother, but the debts I owed you have also been paid. If I must, in the name of Christian unity I will tear you down just as I raised you up!”

The Basileus's sneer cut Moshan deeper than the piercing cold of winter. “You have not the strength. Rome is stronger than any Christian realm, and I am better-trained than any of their leaders. Greater than you. You are not Agdji--you are not even Diluguin.”

Moshan blinked away eyes moistened by fury and shame, but his voice was hard. “I am not my father’s equal. But neither are you. I could never have defeated him, but I can certainly beat you. I WILL tear you down if you dare threaten what we seek to accomplish here, even if it leaves the Jin Khidan Zhou in ruins at my back.”

Maurikios’s haughty eyes gave way to uncertainty, and he unconsciously crossed his arms protectively over his chest. Moshan’s eyes were watery, but his gaze was steely and his voice firm. It was clear that the he was truly willing to sacrifice his entire state to break down the Theodosian walls and topple Maurikios, if that was what it came to.

“Brothers should not fight so.”

Both men turned, surprise written clearly on their faces. It was Urban who had spoken, and in passable Khitan.

“I have taught myself, a little,” he admitted sheepishly, scratching embarrassedly at his nose. “I did not pick up everything that you said, but come--there is no need for harsh words. Let us reach a compromise.”

Moshan and Maurikios continued to glare skeptically at one another, and as they moved to take their seats Urban again switched to Latin. “These will be complex concepts, and my Khitan is not sufficient. You will need to translate,” he nodded to the diminutive Huangdi.

“I assume that even untrained as he is, your Bishop would have told you that the rendering to Caesar has nothing to do with your title, nor with political control but the obedience of peasants to their lords,” Urban began, his voice calm but his eyes sharply focused on the Basileus. “Nor would it have escaped you to realize that the age of your title is as much a weakness as a strength--times have changed, and the Roman Empire, if we are to agree to call your state such, is not what it was. Rome turned to Charlemagne at least partly because your predecessors could not protect us any longer. You were in disorder for decades before and after the proclamation of the Holy Roman Empire. My predecessors did what was needed to secure a powerful protector for Christendom.”

“They did not even consult us!” Maurikios insisted. “A crown was not necessary that very day, and the title was not the Pope’s to give--you know as well as I do that the Donation was a forgery. It could have waited for stability in Constantinople! This violation of our sovereignty poisoned the Empire against Papal authority more than any other decision.”

Urban nodded. “Perhaps, and if so we can repair this error. But first, you will tell me why you demanded something as unreasonable as political control of Christianity.”

Maurikios was silent for a moment, as if struggling to find where to begin, before haltingly starting.

“Shortly after the Khitan settled from the steppe, one of the greatest Emperors of my House, Sabatios, died suddenly of a weak heart. His death was entirely unexpected, and its suddenness allowed for Prvoslav Nemanjic to take power.

“This did not sit well with the Empire. He was Serbian, and had no qualifications for the crown. He attained it merely by being a power-broker in Constantinople, and playing the factions there against one another to his benefit. The Greeks of the Empire have little confidence in the men of the provinces, and that lacking confidence wanes to full suspicion for those, like Prvoslav, who were seen to rise to positions of power in the court not through personal competence but corruption and bribery. Although Prvoslav bought the loyalty of the army, the people and the nobility were against his reign.

“He soon adopted the Greek rite and tried to change his name to Pavlos. Rebellions followed, but rebellions which the Basileus was always able to win. The Komnenoi were weakened at the time; Sabatios’s only son Soterichos was underage, and my grandfather and namesake, Maurikios son of Andronikos, was imprisoned by Prvoslav in the earliest days of his reign, and eventually executed by him.

“Before Prvoslav, the Komnenoi were the strongest landholders in the Empire. After his rule, even though my father Andronikos was able to claim the throne as Lord of Makedonia, it was not even a contest. Every rebel which Prvoslav defeated he strung up, blinded and seized the titles of. For twenty years, the Empire was terrorized. Dozens of ancient Houses now no longer exist at all, wiped out entirely by the Nemanjic. And to this day they are the most powerful landholders in the Empire, and were only emboldened to seize yet more land and power under the weak rule of my aunt.

“By the end, Prvoslav was driven mad by the thought that he had to prove to the lords of the Empire that he was more Greek than his predecessors. He wrote in Greek, spoke Greek, dressed as a Greek, appointed Greeks to govern his native Serbia, even had the Ecumenical Patriarch exhort him as a spiritual Greek. And now this same madness drives his heir.”

Maurikios’s jaw was so visibly tense that Moshan was sure it was painful. But he pressed on.

“The Nemanjic find reasons to avoid dividing their titles on the death of their predecessors. They send children to monasteries, or, if they are unwilling to go, strangle them.

“Theocharistos Nemanjic owns more land in Anatolia than all other landholders put together. He even…”--Maurikios paused, and Moshan was almost sure he heard the sound of his teeth grinding--“…he even owns fortified villas within The City itself, villas I cannot occupy without risking open war.

“Theocharistos, like his father, is obsessed with appearing Greek. There are others within the Empire, powerful rulers, who are unrepentant followers of Orthodoxy. But there are none quite like Theocharistos. He does not do it out of faith, but out of cultural obsession, and a lust for power. He is the focal point for rebellion against my rule in the Empire, and he is strong enough to be a true threat.”

Maurikios paused again, now looking down helplessly at his calloused hands rather than addressing his peers directly.

“I cannot appear weak to him,” he admitted quietly, and with clear fury. “If I do, he may be able to gain enough support to topple me. Only if I return to the Empire with an unprecedented victory would I be able to silence him.”

“Political rule of Christendom is a high bar indeed to reach for,” the Pope said. “Unrealistically high.”

“Not unrealistic,” Maurikios countered, his head rising again. “Constantine ruled all Christendom.

“That was before your own state split the Empire,” the Pope replied, kindly but firmly. “You cannot expect any Christian lord, not even your neighbors, to willingly bow before you. You cannot expect me to ask. Thousands of years have passed. Rome is not dead, but the time where any single lord rules Christianity is at an end.”

Maurikios shook his head violently. “No, no, that is the poisoned voice of appeasem*nt. Every ruler within the bounds of the old Empire rules titles and land given, at least nominally, by a Roman Emperor. Doux, Rex--these are IMPERIAL titles, titles my predecessors issued!”

The Pope was struck by how different the straight-backed and uncompromising man before him was from the deferential young man who had come with Moshan to be baptized in Rome. Rule had changed the Basileus a great deal, and in a very short time.

“And what do you propose that has to do with political control of Christianity?” Urban probed. “The titles may have been given, but they have not belonged to you for centuries.”

“No, but they still belong to the borders of the Empire, borders you must recognize if you acknowledge my state as Roman. Nominally, these titles lay under my suzerainty already. I do not need oaths of fealty and proof of service in order to receive homage from them. All I need is the proof that they recognize Roman authority as superior. They do homage in order to receive recognition of their title, and Rome imposes no expectations upon them.”

Despite himself, Urban laughed, a high-pitched and mirthful peal that cause Moshan to jump unexpectedly. The little Huangdi did not understand what was happening--all this talk of fealty, homage and the borders of the old Empire went above his head. The Khitan state did not have a feudal nobility in the same way western Europe did, and while he had of course read many treatises on western feudalism, they all contradicted one another in terms, such that he failed to understand the truth behind any but its most basic structures. He did not understand what Maurikios proposed.

Urban gingerly wiped a tear from the corner of his eye, still chuckling to himself. “I see now what you propose. I will agree to support it, although there will be conditions to my support, and limitations on which states you may receive homage from.”

Maurikios nodded, “List them.”

“It will apply only to the historic lands of the Eastern Empire, the borders of which in the West will be recognized as the border of the Kingdom of Croatia at Carinthia, the edge of the Donation of Constantine in Latium, and in Africa at Carthage,” Urban began. “So long as Croatia lies in personal union under Hungary, it will not apply to them. Jerusalem, as a Kingdom of God, is excepted from all homage to any party. Finally, it will apply only to independent lords--their homage will stand in for their vassals’ homages also.”

Maurikios paused briefly, but soon stood, placed his hand over his heart, and bowed deeply. “We are in agreement.”

“What did you just agree to?” Moshan asked Urban in Latin.

“Small enough a price,” the Pope replied, still smiling mirthfully, “yet more than I anticipated giving. Your friend is well-trained in strategy indeed. He led by asking far too much, and has made me agree to something I doubt I ever would have otherwise. Lords ruling in the lands of the old Eastern Empire will be required to beseech Constantinople for a diploma of investiture upon succession. It gives the Greeks no true power over these nations, but it recognizes the full Eastern Empire’s borders, and will make your friend look quite powerful.”

Moshan looked to Maurikios in surprise--it was an unexpected and unprecedented grant. “You have done well,” Moshan told him in Khitan.

“I am sorry for my fury,” Maurikios replied earnestly. “But the days of Rome being outcast are over, and that will take reciprocation from both parties. I will talk, but I will not back down from anyone, for any reason--not even you.”

“Now the true work may begin,” Urban said.

The full Conclave did not meet the following day, as had been promised, nor the next. Such was the nature and breadth of the deliberations between the Pope, Basileus and Moshan that the delegates were not called together again until well into June.

The eventual “Greek Union of Galich” was nothing less than a house of cards, a carefully-balanced but precarious set of appeasem*nts. Every demand from the Pope was countered with a demand from the Basileus, and on and on. A restless month had been spent in negotiation finding terms which Urban and Maurikios could agree to, yet the full Conclave would also have to accept them.

Aside from the established investiture agreement by which the Roman Empire was owed homage for titles held within its theoretical borders, there were dozens of other clauses. Most critical of all was the vast series of complicated agreements surrounding the Holy Roman Empire.

Maurikios agreed to acknowledge the grant of the Western Roman Empire to Charlemagne, and its legal authority as successor to the Western Roman Empire. In return, Urban agreed to declare the Donation of Constantine a forgery (restoring the sole right to grant the title of Western Emperor to the Eastern Emperor in 800), denounce the decision of Leo III to grant the title without consulting Constantinople, and to mandate that the Holy Roman Emperor acknowledge the Eastern Emperor’s Imperial dignity.

There was also an over-complicated procedure by which the Western Empire could be abolished. If the Pope, Eastern Emperor, and Khitan Huangdi all agreed that the western Emperor was not fulfilling his responsibilities, the Grant of 800 could be retracted and the title of the Western Empire (though none of its lands and vassals) would revert to the Basileus.

This last clause was insisted upon by Maurikios in order to assert that his title was senior, but it benefitted all parties. Urban and the Papacy gained massive leverage over the Holy Roman Emperor, while the Jin Khidan Zhou, although only selected as the arbiter due to its perceived neutrality following Diluguin’s reaffirmed promise that they would at no point cross the Oder, gained lasting political influence with Constantinople. Only the Holy Roman Empire lost.

Yet there were dozens more clauses still. The Pope recognized Maurikios’s puppet-Bishop Thomas a legitimate investiture; elevated his seat to the permanent equivalent of a Prelature over the Eastern Empire, providing the Basileus expanded authority over the Church within his borders; and gave the Emperors the right of veto over nominees to the see of Constantinople. In exchange, the Basileus acknowledged that the Pope had sole right to invest Bishops within the Empire; that the Pentarchic seat of Constantinople (and Antioch, were it ever recovered) was subsumed to the authority of Rome; and, very much against his will, that the Church had the right of landholding within the Empire.

The Empire agreed to waive its territorial and ecclesiastical rights to the Kingdom of Jerusalem and promise participation in future Crusades in exchange for being declared the Eastern Protector of Christendom; receiving a formal Papal Bull authorizing it to “undertake any pious action required” in order to eradicate heresy within its borders; and a further Bull confirming that either Empire could only be inherited by those following the Catholic rite.

Although the Donation of Constantine was declared forgery, the grants of land enabled by it for the establishment of the Papal States were retroactively approved by Maurikios, in exchange for which the Pope agreed to finance several Greek Catholic seminaries at cost to the Papacy. Maurikios also acknowledged and reaffirmed the independence of the Papacy in Rome.

The final of the important clauses involved the Schism. Here, the arrangements were the most complex. Maurikios agreed that the Pope had universal jurisdiction over the faith, but also persuaded the Pope to acknowledge the Pentarchic seats as ‘divinely inspired,’ a vague definition which placated both sides at the time but would lead to continued debates over the whether or not one of the Pentarchs could actually challenge the determinations of the Pope.

When the final negotiated terms were brought before the full Conclave, the chaos almost rose to the same violent level it had approached when Maurikios first demanded political control of Christianity.

Mu’adh Fudaylid of the Delta loudly proclaimed that his father Dirar would not pay homage to the Basileus, and would rather convert to Islam and entirely abandon brotherhood with the Church, which caused a significant stir and many calls to withdraw the negotiations entirely, a proposition which the Pope flatly declined.

Yet greater by far was the rancorous debate over the fate of the Holy Roman Empire. Most delegates viewed the Empire as expendable and were not bothered by its subsumation to the senior Eastern Empire, and while many Catholic Bishops were infuriated about the claim that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery, Moshan of all people was able to point out clear anachronisms in its Latin which cast its legitimacy into serious doubt.

Yet the Kings of France and Frisia (or more accurately, their delegates) dug their heels in, arguing that the current arrangement was intolerable and that the Empire’s prestige had to be spared with a much more forgiving contract--a position which Eberhard Premyslovci, the Emperor’s brother, strongly opposed!

The Kaiser’s representative was shocked that his title had been spared at all, and was willing to accept humiliation to preserve the Reich. But this did not sit well with the Kings of the west--France stood most to gain by the collapse of the Empire, but Frisia also stood to gain preeminence in German affairs should the Reich falter.

And so, paradoxically, the enemies of the Reich argued for its “strengthening,” hoping all the while that the negotiations would fall through and the Pope would simply be forced to abrogate the title, while the Kaiser’s brother fought tooth and nail to accept a humiliating agreement, for at least it preserved the Empire.

After a week of trying to claw together support, Bishop Henrik and Cardinal Gilbert were forced to admit defeat. Few crowns wished for the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, not out of any altruism but simply because it was a weak state which preserved the balance of power within central Europe. Without it, the Kings of Hungary and Lombardy feared possible attacks from the King of Bohemia, whose power was held in check by the Imperial crown even when it was wielded by the Premyslovci. Likewise, Asser III of Denmark benefitted tremendously by the trade agreements established at the Conference of Prague and had no reason to wish for the collapse of the Empire, while all other states had no stake in the conflict and declared neutrality.

Still, the rancorous issue of homage remained. Mu’adh made it clear that he intended to recommend to his father the abandonment of Christendom--politically, Islam was much safer for the Emirs, and they only retained their Catholic faith because the majority of the population of Aegyptus had converted during the long reign of the de Blois Kings in the mid-1100s.

It was Guglielmo II of Sicily who eventually broke the long stalemate. Fair-minded and humble, the pious King proved willing to bend his knee to the Emperor.

“If you swear to have no aims upon myself or my title,” Guglielmo told Maurikios before the assembled Conclave, “then I will kneel before you and do you homage.”

Maurikios so swore before the assembled delegates, and Guglielmo, drawing his sword, bent his knee and offered it to the Basileus who, upon taking it, smoothly turned it about and offered it to the King once more, hilt-first.

“Rise acknowledged by the Emperor of Rome as the legal Rex Siciliae, governing lands of the Empire by my consent, ruling freely and without imposition in all things.”

The assembled delegates hissed a shallow breath of shock as one--Maurikios had not offered this oath in Greek, nor Latin. He had spoken it in Khitan.

Maurikios was well-aware that Greek Emperors ruling the Roman Empire was a contentious matter in the West, and that, in southern Italy in particular, there was little love lost for the Greeks. He thus consciously chose to avoid giving his acknowledgement in a tongue that few present knew, and fewer still appreciated. Yet he could not speak Latin (beyond saying “Rex Siciliae,” at least), and so simply chose the only other tongue he knew.

To the delegates, however, it was a powerful acknowledgement, and a reminder--the Roman Emperor spoke with the Khitan Huangdi’s tongue because they were the closest of allies, and to oppose him was to oppose the Huangdi. Even with questions about the strength of the Jin Khidan Zhou circling among the delegates, few wished to chance a conflict with Agdji’s state.

In the end, this show of homage (or perhaps the unintended threat behind the usage of Khitan) persuaded Mu’adh, and he agreed to pay homage if Maurikios allowed him to do so now both on his father’s behalf and his brother’s (the future Emir), as well as to receive his acknowledgement in Khitan. Maurikios agreed to both terms, and with Mu’adh’s homage the last damning issue with the Greek Union was resolved.

On the 29th of June, 1261, the Greek Union of Galich was approved by a unanimous vote of 331, with 56 Bishops abstaining. For the first time in centuries, the ruler of Constantinople was openly acknowledged by western Christianity as being the Roman Emperor.

Following the approval of the Greek Union, a week’s recess for celebration was called. Unfortunately for Moshan, during this time Maurikios took his leave of the Conclave to return to Constantinople in order to announce the terms of the Greek Union, as well as to take charge of measures to control the plague there. Although he left Thomas behind as his representative with instructions to support Moshan in all things, it was not the same as having the recognized Roman Emperor present in person in order to offer support.

Still, Urban declined to take his leave, and the promise of his presence was most comforting. Both men knew that the negotiations surrounding the Khitan renunciation of their heresy was going to be protracted and, for Moshan, both challenging and humiliating.

Urban prayed with Moshan throughout the night of the 5th, offering what support he could to his friend.

“Hold to the bravery I know you possess,” Urban counseled him, “and have faith as I know you do in our Christian brotherhood. The admission of the enormity of the Khitan sin will be arduous, and it is pointless to pretend that the assembled Lords will not react with disgust and disdain. But you have proven yourself to them already. You are not admitting personal guilt, and what guilt the Khitan as a whole possess you have already atoned for in part with your deeds. Personal responsibility will still be required, but the worst has already passed. Our Church must now only determine as one how to save the souls of those who are unrepentant.”

A gloomy Moshan shook his head sadly. “I think you mistake how difficult this process will be. This is only the first half of the conflict, and it will be enough of a humiliation already. Yet when the Conclave is concluded and my lords are free from their prisons, that will be the true test. And I fear that it will once more be decided with bloodshed.”

Moshan wore simple brown woolen robes the following day, and every day of the Conclave thereafter. He evoked the image of a penitent, and this impression was not far from the truth. The sole difference was that Moshan was both the guilty party and their arbiter--a stand-in for the guilt of the Khitan state as a whole, yet also a redeemed figure who was to argue for their rights.

The Huangdi fidgeted nervously and missed that several Lords called out to him in greeting. Only Siaugu’s presence at his side gave him any sense of calm at all. He was terrified, a gut-churning fear of a sort he had never felt before. In battle, Moshan could trust the men beside him--in this engagement, he was alone.

When the Huangdi saw the line of traitors finally being led in by the captain of the guard and pressed firmly down into their seats, he stood nervously and stepped forward, heedless that the meeting had not been called to order. A sudden quiet washed over the delegates as they saw that Moshan had taken the dais.

His throat was painfully dry. It was difficult for him to begin, but slowly he forced them out through his embarrassed shame.

“The Khitans have saved Europe from the Mongol onslaught,” he croaked, “and in this we fulfilled our oath to Christendom. So too have we fulfilled our sworn promise to seek no land in Europe not given to us by consensus. We have even fulfilled the dream of Daweizu, whom you know as Agdji I, in uniting the Churches. But in two great respects we have betrayed those who sheltered us: we have failed to eradicate concubinage as we agreed to, and we have committed an altogether more grave and premeditated sin, one which I have spent the past several years studying the origins of in preparation for this Conclave. From the bottom of my soul I beg your patience and pity as I recount to you the greatest shame we will ever bear.”

Moshan told them everything, for now leaving out any speculation. For hours on end the chamber was deathly quiet save for the noise of the little Emperor speaking.

He told them of Agdji II’s obsession with the ‘features of the East’. He told them of Agdji II first marrying Cheu’en, his own daughter, and utilizing the concubinage clause to hide their blood relation by playing her off as a steppe noble to foreigners. He acknowledged the widespread presence of sacral incest in the Jin Khidan Zhou not ten years later, after this first known case of the practice. He detailed how the court had been deeply involved in obscuring the nobility’s indulgence in the practice from foreign dignitaries and visitors, while Khitan commoners often lived together in tight-knit family units where it was easy to hide the prevalence of incest. He, breaking down and weeping openly, admitted that the court had willingly propagated this bastardized belief to the state’s new conquests, corrupting the Lithuanians and even pressing Polish and Russian peasants in the Jin Khidan Zhou--often successfully--to participate. He admitted that he had gone on Crusade in part to absolve himself of his predecessors’ sins, and had converted to Catholicism out of the belief that Tengrism was irreparably corrupted. And, finally, he, hollowly, acknowledged that the rebellion which had occurred upon his return to the Jin Khidan Zhou following his coronation and conversion had been an attempt to overthrow him, in the name of Agdji I and the perpetuation of sacral incest at the court.

When the Huangdi finished, deathly silence continued to reign. How could anyone respond?

With the sun already trailing towards its setting, Urban recessed the Conclave for the day, to return on the morrow in order to discuss the implications of what they had heard. Moshan, his throat sore and eyes burning with shed tears, was led out quietly by Siaugu. He felt the eyes of every Lord upon him.

The delegates were summoned to meet much earlier in the morning the following day, and they were as verbose now as they had been silent before. A flurry of Latin was set forth as Bishops rose to speak, either individually or in translation for their Lords.

“How could such a thing have been hidden from us?” the lowborn Bishop Jaromar, representative of the Wends, asked incredulously.

To his surprise, it was not Moshan who responded, but Lajos of Hungary, speaking on behalf of Prince Abel.

“It was not entirely unknown,” he translated reluctantly. “We have a close relationship with the Khitan, and many lords of the house of Yaerud rule lands within our realm. These royals… they clearly knew they should not speak of this truth with outsiders, but sometimes, rarely, they would admit to parts. Never the whole, however, and never the scope. It was always implied to be a commoner’s predilection, which sometimes a foolish noble would take up. Nothing so widespread as what we have heard yesterday.”

“I also am familiar with this,” Angelo, Bishop for Guglielmo II of Sicily, spoke on his behalf. “The duch*essa Sinelgen Yaerud rules Calabria in my liege's name, and she admitted that her grandparents--that is, Agdji II and his concubine--were related. Yet she claimed they were uncle and niece, an abnormal and consanguineous union, but nothing so blasphemous as the union of a father with his daughter.”

“If it was known of before, why was it not spoken of!” Jaromar exclaimed.

“You should ask your own King the same,” Severin, Lord Bishop of Eastern Skane, interjected bluntly. “Your realm abuts that of the Khitans and trades with them often, as does mine. We see nothing of this when we send ships to Huangjin Zhongxin to barter. In their shame, these degenerates clearly hide their preoccupations. If rumors are all there ever was, that explains the silence easily enough.”

“Yet the Polish,” Urban interjected suddenly, “have lived closer to and indeed among the Khitan for half a century, and more than any other Lords were in a position to know the truth, especially after Ago forced Branimir into subservience. I will hear now from the Polish lords how they failed to notice such a widespread phenomenon.”

Moshan’s Polish vassals were all present at the Conclave at the request of both Moshan and the Pope, and they now took time to confer with one another before Lord Bishop Dytryk of Kustrin stood forth to provide their answer.

“It is likely that the Huangdi could provide a more complete answer,” he began, “yet if one is requested of us, it is that the Khitan court has always been cautious of outsiders. Trade is severely restricted, either to the capital or to designated border towns, and in all cases foreign traders are forced to live in compounds set aside for them, separated from the locals. Foreign workers and migrants are not welcomed, and those residents who leave the Jin Khidan Zhou, it is rumored, are forever barred from returning on pain of death. We are given to understand these are all terms established by Agdji I.”

“Agdji II,” Moshan corrected. “Only the lattermost is of Agdji I, and in his day it applied to Khitans leaving the Jin Khidan Zhou.”

Dytryk nodded politely to the diminutive Emperor. “Just so.”

“Yet as you can see,” Dytryk continued, turning back now to the assembly as a whole, “the Khitan crown has at every opportunity limited foreign access, even to their closest neighbors. If what the Huangdi claims is true, this was not always so--yet at least from the rule of Agdji II, entering the parts of towns and villages where this incest was practiced was difficult in the extreme, and few residents of the Jin Khidan Zhou ever travelled outside of it save for traders, exempt from the exclusion on leaving its borders.

“From the earliest days of their settlement, non-Khitan nobility were ruthlessly purged within the Crownlands, and this has only recently begun to change. There were no Polish, Russian, Wendish or even Lithuanian Lords within the Jin Khidan Zhou for many decades to mark this practice and share it to the outside world, and prior to the reign of Huangdi Moshan we have been told that any who were raised up were forced to convert to Tengrism and take their own kin as wives, making them complicit in this madness.

“Even if the rare Pole or Wend found their way to a more distant village, how easy it is to hide consanguinity! Families live together by nature, and in this twisted and barbarous practice it takes only the façade of living as father and daughter by day to give way to the truth of living as man and wife at night, where the unwelcome foreigner cannot see their sin.”

“This reeks of premeditation,” Trond of Hamarr, clerical delegate of Norway, announced loudly. “The delegates of the first Conclave were lied to about the degree to which Khitans intermarried with their kin, rigid restrictions were established on foreign involvement in the state to hide the practice, and those who left could never return to prove any rumors they might tell, on pain of death. A tidy, corrupt system.”

“You are correct that it seems premeditated, Bishop,” Moshan agreed, “though I think shortly you will find this premeditation did not originate with whom you assume it did. You are, however, incorrect as regards the Khitan breaking with the original Conclave. The terms of the Conclave, with the shameful exception of the concubinage clause, are still fully adhered to--we have lied and hidden the truth from our Christian brothers, yet by the terms of the agreement itself we have not broken faith. The Khitan and Latin copies of the first Conclave both contain identical wording for kin-marriage.”

The same silence which had reigned when Moshan revealed this to Urban almost exactly eight years ago in the sleepy little hamlet of Zarnow reigned once again.

“The Conclave itself is corrupted?” Cardinal Gilbert asked incredulously. “If that is so, it is a clear sign of premeditation. Yet it is also the greatest possible blow--if the original Conclave was entered into in ill faith…”

“I no longer believe that to be the case,” Moshan replied evenly. “Agdji II’s daughter Cheu’en was only seven years old when the first Conclave took place, and we know of no instance of kin-marriage before he took her as wife.”

Gilbert sighed in obvious exasperation. “Then how do you explain this damning clause?”

“A translation error is most likely, one which was seized on by Agdji II to fuel his perversions. I will provide evidence for this as soon as there are no further questions.”

“Are you inbred?”

The question came from Cardinal Ponce de Acuna, lord of Alto Aragon. Forced to live in close proximity to Tengrists who had all proven false, he had little love for the faith and less trust in the Khitan, whom he firmly believed were the puppet-masters orchestrating the flight of rapacious adventurers from east to west.

Moshan grit his teeth. It was an insulting question, but a valid one to ask, and one which he had been confident would come.

“I am not,” he replied. “I am the direct descendent of Agdi I through his first wife Purgyal Kyi, Agdji II through his first wife the Lady Huei, and my father Diluguin through his first wife, the Lietuvai woman Milda. I am descended from neither concubine nor kin-marriage.”

Moshan paused here, and for several seconds steeled himself before continuing. “However, my children are born of incest. My wife, Siaugu, is my second cousin. This itself is not consanguineous, however her parents were half-brother and sister, Yaerud Ituk and Yaerud Suirgen, both children of Agdji I through different concubines.”

This set the entire hall to intense murmuring. Moshan stole a glance at Siaugu and saw her straight-backed and proud, yet with a clenched jaw and a trembling lip--she felt the judgmental faces of Christendom upon her. His heart ached for her.

“And how many others are tainted by these unions?” Trond of Hamarr spoke up again. “What of my own liege’s son, Prince Ivar, married to your sister Telgen?”

“Telgen is not born of incest,” Moshan said softly, “though she is the daughter of a concubine. But she laid with my father before he passed and gave him two sons.”

At this the hall burst into tumult, with delegates jumping from their seats and screaming curses.

“My Prince, my Prince is tainted by this harlot! Curse you, curse you for foisting this sinful woman upon him so shamelessly!” he cried.

“And duch*essa Sinelgen, granddaughter of incest…”

“My God above, what is to be done?”

“What of Yaerud Singer of Wittenburg, did his grandsires--”

“Heresy, and through it Damnation, Damnation to the Khitan!”

“Udu-on of Trenscen--”

“What of Aerlu’on, heir to Erdelyorszag?”

“Holy Father, what of the other Tengrists! It is not just the Khitan--”

“Silence, silence!” Urban called, slamming his fist on his lectern. But it was futile; the hall was in a total furor, entirely uncontrollable. The enormity of what Moshan had revealed to them had finally begun to sink in.

Agdji had brought over a million Tengrists to Christendom, of whom the Khitan were only the most prestigious. All of these Tengrists looked to Huangjin Zhongxin for guidance, and while most of the Khitan (and all of the Mongols) of the eastern steppe had refused to follow Agdji’s syncretic Tengrism, hundreds of thousands of other Tengrists had, and had adopted sacral incest along with it. Thousands had migrated throughout Europe, especially into Hungary, where much of the ruling nobility were still Cuman remnants left behind following the It-Oba Khanate’s short-lived conquest of the Magyars. There were potentially incestuous unions everywhere.

Although Urban continued to try to bring the hall back to order, dozens of delegates had wandered out in a daze, and eventually it was given up. A two-day recess was called for prior to reconvening.

“At the request of the Pope,” Moshan opened on the day of the 9th, “I have confirmed that no other Yaerud married outside of the Jin Khidan Zhou bears the taint of incest. Yaerud Singer, Yaerud Udu-on, and Yaerud Niauraq, father of all the heirs to Erdyelorszag, were all trueborn children of first wives.”

“This is but small comfort to those of us who have been ill-treated by the Yaerud,” Trond observed.

Moshan nodded wearily. “It is so. But the past cannot be changed. Telgen was removed from the court by the bureaucrats while I was on Crusade. I condemn it, but it was done without my knowledge.”

“And yet it was done regardless!” Trond shouted, standing and crying for further support. “What is to be done to offer recompense for your incompetence?”

“Do we speak now of recompense?” Moshan asked icily. “I do not have the temper--nor the pride--of my father, but do not mistake me for being soft. What recompense do you deserve? Is it safety from the Mongol hordes, which we still provide? Is it the recapture of Jerusalem, which I have already made good? Is it the reunification of Rome with the Catholic Church, which was carried out under my auspices and with the service of my armies? Or perhaps it could be accounted to be the truthfulness which I display now to recount the entirety of the history of our sin without varnish?

“I say again: do not mistake my compassion for weakness. I will not be extorted. For all of our faults, we have still bled for you as we swore. I have already made good my redemption.”

“The Emperor has been on Crusade,” Urban interjected tiredly, “and in so doing has been cleansed of his sins, whatsoever they were. I hold his position well-founded.”

“If it pleases the assembly,” Moshan pressed on, “I would now present my evidence regarding Weizong--that is, Agdji II’s--responsibility behind the perversion of the Conclave of Galich.”

“As most of you are well-aware, Agdji was already an old man when the time came for the first Conclave. Our own records place him at sixty, though what Latin documents I have read give him as fifty-nine. This discrepancy is minor--both sides agree that Agdji was already extremely aged at the Conclave. Yet he would go on to live for over twenty more years, sire four more children, and manage matches for many of his older children.

“Our people have been men of letters for centuries, and the records of our bureaucracy are complex and comprehensive,” Moshan said, gesturing broadly with his stubby little arms. “They do not elide when a marriage of kin takes place, going all the way back to the days of Agdji’s father Dashi, who was married to his first cousin Tabuyen out of necessity, during our flight from the east.

“Soon, I will speak to the evidence provided by Agdji’s later involvement with arranging the marriages of his children and grandchildren. However, the following record is the first piece of evidence I shall submit indicating that Agdji I did not intend for the kinship clause to exist. I read now the words of Agdji I, as dictated to his distant cousin and scribe, Yaerud An.”

For the first time in almost a half-century, the words of Agdji the Destroyer were brought back to living color within the world.

“’My father’s marriage to Tabuyen was political necessity. We fled west with only a few thousand souls and battered wagons. In order to claim the mantle of Huangdi after such an immeasurable defeat he needed the support of the Siau, the last living Khitan noble house from the days before our flight.

‘Yet Tabuyen proved a bane. I pray the Siau will be more faithful in the future, but her betrayals are part of the lessons we have learned in these hard days. Tabuyen’s close relations to Dashi led her to intrigue, to advance her own position and the position of her noble family at court. It created infighting, and led to the murder of those concubines which Dashi took in order to produce a son. It almost led to my own murder. We seek now further afield, for alliances with foreign realms which can bolster our Celestial Khanate, and women who do not have cliques at court whom they will support with dagger and poison. This is the purpose of my marriage to the Purgyal. The joining of our families to one another must cease, or it will tear the Golden Khitans asunder.’”

As Moshan tightened the scroll from which he read, Purgyal Tsubartsan stood from his chair and spat on the floor before him.

“It is a fabrication!” he cried. “It is! It must be!”

The Imperial Guard were on him in moments, clubbing him none-too-gently on the back of the head and forcing a gag in his mouth. He grunted and gesticulated, but they forced his hands to the arms of his chair and tied them firmly. Moshan looked on dispassionately.

“Forgive the unpleasantness,” he said mildly. “For those who are unaware of the terms within this letter, it indicates that Dashi, the father of Agdji, married his first cousin in a political union to bolster his claim to our Imperial title. But Agdji clearly indicates displeasure at this union and foreswears any future such joinings.”

The missive from Agdji deeply shook the confidence of the rebel clique, although publicly they all declared it a forgery. Yet for the Church it would have proven the highest embarrassment to have endorsed a liar, and its representatives seized on it as an opportunity to redeem Agdji, and examined the document none-too-closely.

Unfortunately, the letter WAS actually a forgery as charged, commissioned by Moshan during the three years between the end of the Tengrist rebellion and the Conclave. It wouldn’t be discovered until some 300 years later, but there were telltale signs for those who knew where to look, the simplest being the reference to the Khitans as the “Golden Khitans”--at the time, the only color associated with them was black--the Qara Qitai, as the Qarluqs called them, the “Black Khitans,” bringers of ruination.

So also was there no mention of Tabuyen’s poisoning of Dashi’s concubine Gonu, which led to the death of his first son, Agdji’s elder brother Belbun. This was because the Khitan had by this time forgotten that Agdji ever had a brother, and had mythologized him into being an only son. Eventually, when ancient records of that time were recovered and the tale of Dashi’s kinslaying was recalled, it was clear Agdji would not have avoided mentioning such an obvious consequence of Tabuyen’s actions.

Finally and most obviously, Agdji actually married his first daughter Ordelhan to her first cousin, Siau Uldjin. This was forgotten because every Siau male for six generations had been named Uldjin, and it had been mistakenly believed that this one had been Agdji’s second cousin, not his nephew.

Moshan's version of events which placed Agdji II at the heart of the incestuous conspiracy was the correct conclusion, yet the use of the forgery to bolster his argument--a matter of life and death for thousands, as he saw it, in the hostile political climate following his conversion--would later cast doubt on his entire hypothesis’s veracity. Historians to this day struggle with the kin-marriage clause and the origin of sacral incest precisely because they so often come to the understandable conclusion that Moshan was clearly attempting to hide something with this forged document.

“Now to the matter of Agdji’s children,” Moshan continued. “I have compiled all records regarding their marriages, and they indicate a universal avoidance of kin-marriage during Agdji’s lifetime.

“His eldest daughter, Ordelhan, was married to Siau Uldjin--the closest union in these records, yet her third cousin. Aerlu’on was married first to an unknown Daerqa woman and then to Marina von Groitsch, both foreign alliances; his second daughter, Arel was married directly to Sugr Daerqa. Agdji II was married first to the Lady Huei, securing a foreign alliance with the Qin Dynasty of the east, though we shall return to his relationship with his daughter Cheu’en. Of Yash there is a record that she lived to adulthood, yet nothing else--we do not know her fate. Ago first married Helan Daudji, a lowborn Khitan washwoman, and upon her death married her sister Helan Yeugun. Paudun was married to the King of Tibet, according to our records--again, a foreign alliance. Telbe was married very extravagantly to Harald af Estrid, Lord of Ostergotland, 61 years ago on new years’ day to reassure Christianity of our benevolent intentions. Although often forgotten, Ituk was married on Agdji’s order to the granddaughter of Philippe the Just of France, Judith Capet, for the same reason, though she died young. Meanwhile Dashi never married, and Djoborin’s natural daughter Vasilisa was not born to him until three years after Agdji’s death, through a union with a noble Russian woman living in Galich. No other of Agdji’s children were old enough to marry during his lifetime.

“The evidence is available to all who wish to study it, and damning in its universality. There is no instance of kin-union among the Jin Khidan Zhou during the lifetime of Agdji I, save, as I am sure my cousin Tabuyen could recount--”

“With the birth of my mother!” he interrupted loudly, forcing a nearby Bishop to translate clumsily for him. “Yaerud Qadju was born to Cheu’en years before Daweizu’s death!”

“Just so,” Moshan agreed with a nod. “Yet there is an explanation. Agdji II left few records, most of what was left behind belonging to his wife the Lady Huei, and none of that speaking to this matter. Yet Ago left behind many transcribed records even before his rule as Da Irkin, from the days of his reign as Lord of Plock. I quote now from two.

“The first, dated 28 April 1221: ‘The party of the Huangdi has just passed through Plock on its way back to Huangjin Zhongxin. Turburur Daudjil has been eliminated’--this was one of Agdji’s old provincial governors turned rebel, a traitor executed by Agdji--‘but privately my father informed me of how very narrow a thing it was. He tells none, yet his eyes are clouded with age, and he confessed that it was difficult for him to even stand in his armor, and he had been forced to remove the vambraces just to have the strength to lift his arms. He is by all rights ancient, and Tengri above blesses us through his continued survival. Yet his vitality wanes, and he is loathe to appear weak. He has not travelled south to Kiev, or indeed outside of the capital, for almost seven summers now…’

“15 February 1222: ‘I have spoken to Agdji’--here understood to mean his brother, Agdji II; Ago does not refer to his father by name in any of these records--‘regarding the death of Aerlu’on. We both expressed dismay and unease that father regretted the decision to exile him--it is difficult to recall that father is not perfect, yet it becomes ever more impossible to ignore. Agdji insists that he is becoming more unwell. The Huangdi no longer leaves his chambers, and the news of Mongol victories to the east prove taxing on his well-being. As we spoke on previously, with my agreement Agdji has moved forward and permanently assumed the function of regent for the rule of our father. This arrangement has been ongoing in function for years already, and as before only the senior bureaucrats need to be made aware...’”

By now the faces of the rebels were rigid masks, yet Moshan continued to hammer them.

“With all respect to my great ancestor, his victory over Daudjil appears to have been a fluke. In the waning days of Agdji I’s rule, he was nearly too infirm to walk, as well as blind, or nearly so. He rarely left the capital. Ago’s notes make it clear that Agdji II was so concerned about the health of the Emperor that they jointly agreed that Weizong--apologies, Agdji II--should take over the state years before Agdji I died. And, although these measures were not instituted until Agdji I had passed, it was Agdji II who instituted all of the policies which limited the movement of peasants, locked down trade to isolated border settlements, and forcibly forbid anyone from leaving the Jin Khidan Zhou.

“I am not here to judge Agdji II or Ago for their decisions to remove Agdji I from power. But I am here to judge Agdji II for his relationship with Cheu’en, and here we have what is needed to make a determination: Agdji II had motive in his lust for his daughter, well-attested among my fellow Khitan; had opportunity through his control of the state even before Agdji I’s death; and he was the only figure who would have desired to do so during the reign of Agdji I, who stood against the kin-marriage which our people once practiced. It seems obvious that he must have been the one who falsely modified the language of the original Conclave as well.

“With greatest shame but highest sincerity, I beg of this assembled Conclave to vote on this evidence and declare that Agdji II broke covenant with Europe.”

The Conclave debated this request for four days, forbidding any Khitan from entering the hall during that time. Moshan spent sleepless nights waiting, yet need not have worried; it was a foregone conclusion, for the prestige of the Church if nothing else, that they would absolve Agdji I and condemn Agdji II.

With Agdji I absolved of guilt, the sanctity of the original Conclave was saved--if cleansed of their sins, a new union with the Khitans was possible. At Moshan’s request, the rebel lords were removed from the chamber as he announced his goals for this new union.

“When the Polish lords supported me in the Tengrist rebellion,” Moshan said, “I promised the abolition of several unjust laws, as well as several new privileges as recognition of the trust they placed in me. I call now upon the Conclave to hear these terms and make them Ecumenical.”

Yet here, for the first time at this Conclave, Moshan faced real resistance.

Not a single lord present was pleased at the prospect of an Ecumenical ruling enforcing a political reality. This seemed by far too akin to the likes of the Fourth Council of Constantinople, which was called solely to legitimate the deposition of a Patriarch. As the early Ecumenical Councils had become focused more upon politics than religion, their authority began to be detrimentally questioned. The Greek and Khitan Unions were critical, but they were critical to regulate their entries to the faith, to combat heresy, to lay theological and socio-religious issues to rest--the Conclave did not exist to rubber-stamp unrelated political maneuvers. If the Conclave did so, it would open the door to Church meddling in secular fiefdoms.

It was not merely Khitan enemies like Sieciech Gryfita who rose against this call--even allies like Thomas of Constantinople were forced to vote firmly against the request. In a crushing defeat, Moshan’s request was nearly unanimously denied.

“The will of the Conclave is clear,” Urban intoned, though not without frustration. “Your agreement with your vassals is unrelated to the religious union of the Khitan state with the Catholic Church. You may present the terms of this union to the Conclave together with the religious union, but only the religious union will be made Ecumenical.”

Moshan had not expected this, and thus had not begun to negotiate the terms of his secular agreement with his vassals, anticipating as he had that he would be able to do so in the Conclave. Yet even though he was bitterly disappointed at the refusal to declare these negotiations Ecumenical, he still insisted that the Ecumenical and secular ruling should be presented together, as their terms were meant to be agreed upon as one. As a result, he begged a month’s allowance for negotiation with the nobility of the Jin Khidan Zhou.

In the end this proved unacceptable, as after just a month the delegates would be in the depths of August, and the blistering heat of the hottest month of the year. Instead the Conclave moved for a recess of two full months, to reconvene on September 13th.

All of the great nobles of the Jin Khidan Zhou were invited to these negotiations save for the rebels, who are decreed to have no say and whose agreement to the terms will be a precondition for their release. Yet no Khitan high noble who had not already spoken out in favor of Moshan came, save for Sen Dorhan of Turov. Stupid and incompetent, Dorhan was nevertheless the least blatantly hostile of all of the vacillating lords, and during the negotiations Moshan would press him hard to convert fully and swear renewed fealty.

Negotiations with his vassals proved extremely difficult, as Moshan wished to extract significant concessions from all Khitans, even the loyalists, who balked. Shulu Baisha-an of Majaus in particular was polite but insistent that, while he had wrongfully rebelled against Moshan, he had recognized his mistake, kowtowed and begged forgiveness, converted, and was leading a life as a loyal Catholic now. Why should he be punished as if he were unrepentant?

Moshan attempted to explain that what he wished was only to reform the Jin Khidan Zhou to a form closer to a European Kingdom, while also centralizing some additional power in the hands of the Huangdi--not a punishment, an attempt to bolster the state’s security by empowering its ruler. Yet the nobility vacillated between recalcitrant and outright hostile, and Moshan despaired of the possibility of being able to convince them in the time allotted. He was prepared to ask for another month’s recess, but circ*mstances unfortunately came to a head before he could.

Maurikios was a powerful ruler and a powerful man, leading an empowered state recognized by the rest of Christendom. But it was never going to be so easy as ‘a nod from Rome and all is well.’ The Nemanjic were unwilling to give up their Imperial ambitions for anything. The First Maurician Revolt had begun.

Chapter 24: The Pale Khitan, Pt. VII - The Maurician Revolts

Chapter Text

Although Moshan was loathe to leave the business of the Conclave unfinished for the time being, there was nothing to be done--he would not leave Maurikios, his brother and closest ally, unsupported. Begging the forgiveness of the delegates, he called for a permanent recess until the rebellion was addressed. The very day he received word he had already called for the muster, and organized the Teutonic Order to march out to suppress the Orthodox heretics alongside the Imperial Army.

“God go with you, Moshan,” Urban said, embracing the small man as he prepared to ride north to Huangjin Zhongxin, “and the thoughts of His Church also! Should Maurikios fall, everything we have striven for could be undone. I pray for your safety, but above all for your victory, and the safeguarding of God’s faithful.”

“We have not tasted defeat yet,” Moshan replied, “and we will not begin now. God save you, Urban! I will see you anon, when the Conclave reconvenes!” And the Huangdi sped off--or, at least, sped as fast as his little pony would carry him.

But Moshan would never see Urban again in this life.

By the end of the year, Moshan had seen to the muster, formally authorized Siaugu as his regent to take any action which she saw fit (save for pardoning or accepting the conversion of his Tengrist vassals, which he reserved for himself alone), and rode hard south, already reaching the borderlands between the Duchy of Galich, Kiev, and the It-Oba Khanate, where the Agdji Huangdi briefly turned to put down a raid launched by vassals of Khan Khutula Jochid before continuing on to Constantinople.

But Moshan, though technically still within the Jin Khidan Zhou, was far too distant to communicate with at speed, and Huangjin Zhongxin was already under the control of Siaugu, under whom it would remain for a very long time.

As one of her very first acts as Regent, the Huangho--who had always mistrusted the gada Talava following their initial betrayal in Tabuyen’s rebellion--convinced the Bishop of Diluguin (so named for Moshan’s father), also known as Diluguin, to declare Zygimantas an apostate who was still secretly practicing Tengrist rites. Although the inquisition was still in its formative stages and lacked much strength with the Teutonic Order withdrawn from the capital, it was powerful enough to bring Zygimantas to the capital in chains, and to--with the full authority of the Pope--declare him apostate and order him burned at the stake, giving over the rule of Lietuva to his minor son, Dravenis.

Siaugu’s harsh (some would say brutal and underhanded) handling of the threat posed by Zygimantas, coupled with the continued house arrest of all of the great rebels, quickly forced the remaining free vassals of the Jin Khidan Zhou into line. Moshan was a kind and forgiving man--his wife was not.

It was April before the Imperial Army was finally able to make its way to Constantinople, by which time the capital was already invested by an enemy army under the command of the head of the rebel coalition, Photemios Neokaisareites.

As an Orthodox loyalist, Photeinos was willfully acting as a pawn of the Nemanjic. Theocharistos Nemanjic knew that a rebellion directly led by himself, if it failed, would lead to his imprisonment, and likely blinding or execution--an unacceptable danger for his dynasty. As such he instructed Photeinos to lead the rebellion, though Theocharistos would support him, providing lion’s share of the armies to break the Basileus on his behalf. This way, even if the war ended in defeat, Theocharistos himself could slip away back to his demesne and gather further forces to resist the Basileus.

By the time Moshan arrived in Thrake, the defenses of Constantinople had been under siege for some weeks, and the Roman army was occupied chasing Theocharistos’s main force through Bulgaria, leaving the defense of the capital to Moshan. Yet the Khitan army was double the strength of their opponents, and lacking Theocharistos in command only the incompetent Photeinos was there to resist them. It was not even a challenge for the Khitan to relieve the City of the World’s Desire--it was a slaughter.

Moshan immediately capitalized on the victory and rushed to Photeinos’s seat at Kibaia, capturing it exactly a month to the day from the defeat of the rebel army outside of Constantinople--and, more importantly, capturing the rebel leader still inside. The Imperial Army moved more quickly than the rebels had believed possible, lulled into a sense of security over Maurikios's slow sieges and deliberate movement around Thrace three years prior.

Although this did not immediately break the spirit of the coalition standing against Maurikios, with one of their armies beaten and their ostensible leader captured the coalition stood on shaky ground--the possibility of their victory would come down to the performance of Theocharistos’s army, yet combined the forces of Maurikios and Moshan outnumbered him two-to-one.

Following the siege of Kibaia Moshan and the Imperial Army wheeled back to Constantinople in order to meet with Maurikios’s levies. Unbeknownst to them, however, this played directly into the expectations of Theocharistos, who believed that his only chance lie in knocking the Khitans out first, then securing additional support from the Orthodox countryside for his fight against Maurikios. Accordingly, his army under Kephale Eusebios struck out for Constantinople in the hopes of breaking the Khitan lines quickly.

Unfortunately for Theocharistos, the Khitans were not fresh to war. They had a well-ordered and well-defended camp with swift scouts which identified the approaching army days in advance of its arrival. When Eusebios arrived and found the Khitans arrayed against him in full defensive posture he made a show of engaging them, but quickly realized that there was no means of achieving victory--he left a rearguard to slow the Khitans down and quit the field, rushing toward his master’s capital at Attaleia.

So ended the First Maurician Revolt, with what could at best be called a pyrrhic victory--the rebel coalition had been beaten, but Theocharistos Nemanjic and his army had survived, and the man himself was still roaming free.

Still, peace was better than the alternative, and Maurikios’s rapid victory, in addition to the clear support which the Khitans provided him, left Moshan hopeful that the Basileus’s vassals would not be so foolish as to try to rebel against him once more.

Siaugu had forwarded several missives to Moshan during the nine months he had been on campaign, and prior to setting off back to the Jin Khidan Zhou he stopped briefly at Constantinople to rest and send runners ahead with instructions. One of them, surprisingly, had to do with Sen Dorhan II--he appeared to be ready to abandon Tengrism.

Although Dorhan verged on the edge of actual mental retardation, he very narrowly missed that mark--he was simply very, very stupid and very, very incompetent both, an unpleasant conclusion when one realizes that his territory, Turov, had been the subject of harsh sieges in both the Kinslayer's Gambit and Tabuyen’s rebellion, as well as having been captured by Jochi during his invasion and having fallen half a dozen other times to border raids. Turov was among the poorest territories in the entire Empire, and also the poorest-led.

Nevertheless, however limited the help that Dorhan could provide was, he was still willing to kowtow, admit the flaws of Tengrism, and convert to Catholicism. That was enough for Moshan--he authorized Siaugu to stand in his place for Dorhan’s submission, and thus the Tqosi of Turov was the first of the unrepentant lords to willingly acknowledge the findings presented at the Second Conclave.

Moshan soon took his leave of The City and made for the Jin Khidan Zhou once again, eager to reach Huangjin Zhongxin and see Siaugu, as well as to summon back the delegates to complete the Conclave--he even sent the Teutonic Knights ahead of him in order to shore up the flagging Inquisiton.

Unfortunately, it was not destined to be so easy as that. Theocharistos, predictably, utilized the army that was rushing back to Attaleia in order to resist Maurikios’s attempts to jail him as a traitor, and yet another rebellion sprung up--although this time, blessedly, Theocharistos was at least the clear leader.

Absent the support of the Teutons, Moshan nevertheless immediately declared his support for Maurikios and wheeled back south to his aid, only pausing long enough to send a rider north to inform Siaugu that her time as regent would be extended.

Plague had been ripping through the heartland of Rome since before Maurikios had crowned, in 1260--over three years now of continuous disease, and indeed a multitude of different diseases. Slow Fever, Camp Fever and Measles were all present in the area, and all to devastating effect. In fact, the Imperial Army had suffered far more losses to the plagues than it had to combat.

This reality should have made itself known to Moshan after the Battle of Tarsia. In a good defensive position with strong commanders, the Khitans were nevertheless battered by the enemy forces, even despite their commander Argyros Petzikopoulos being seriously ill with typhus. In defensive terrain, no Khitan army should ever have suffered a mere 1:2 casualty ratio. The army having been so bloodied was a clear sign that it was suffering from fatigue and disease, yet Moshan did not heed these signs, even as Robin, his field commander, urged him to withdraw. Plagued by thoughts of protecting the rule of Maurikios, Moshan ordered his men to immediately give chase.

Moshan’s pursuit led to the Battle of Khliara, in the semidesert county of Lydia. Argyros had died due to his disease, and Theocharistos had assumed direct command. Plagued by both pneumonia and constant stress and with far less experience in warfare, he was confronted with the impossible prospect of facing the Khitan armies in open terrain. There were no mountains, no hills within which to defend. It was impossible to prove victorious.

And yet he did. Untrained, unskilled, overweight and feebly ill, with an army only three-quarters the size of the Khitan force, Theocharistos did not just win, he scored a staggering victory. In a single fell swoop over half the Imperial Army was killed, completely removing it as an independent factor in the conflict, while Theocharistos’s men suffered minimal losses.

Khitan histories would argue that Theocharistos proved victorious because of his army’s large amount of horse archers and cataphracts, neither of which the Khitans had in large number any longer. Yet this was a hollow and self-serving defense--not since the days of Agdji II had an army of the royal line lost in the field, and not since the days of Daweizu himself had the Imperial host itself failed--and even then, but once. Even undermanned and ravaged by plague as it was, there should not have been the faintest chance of defeat in open plains. This was a failure of leadership--the price of over-confidence.

The Imperial Army had been loyal to Moshan his entire reign, even after his conversion. They believed in the man they had once known as the Di Yi Taisi, or First Prince--he was the son of Diluguin, as well as being the main strategist and architect of the defeat of Jochi Khan during his abortive invasion of the Jin Khidan Zhou. He was not the equal of his sire, and yes, he was a dwarf--but he was intelligent, perceptive, hard-working and well-trained in the art of war. They were confident in him.

But, it must be said, much of this confidence came from the simple fact that he had never been defeated. Defeat rattles any faith, even the strongest. And the defeat at Khliara was damning indeed, so great were the stakes in favor of the Khitan.

As the Imperial Army fled west and crossed the Sea of Marmara at Kallipolis, the soldiers were sullen at best, violent at worst--no living man among them had experienced defeat, and much like Daweizu when the Second Liao Empire shattered, a sudden defeat unlooked-for drove them to the brink of despair. Men who were not used to quitting the field without being able to bury the bodies of their comrades raged and wept, and there were suddenly many who looked askance at Moshan and his new religion. Did it make him weak?

Moshan sought to immediately quell these concerns, and to do so he raced to Nikomedeia and linked up with the army of Maurikios. Although Moshan would have preferred to act independently, the Imperial Army was by now far too battered to do so, and--though it pained him to say it--it might not even have been fully safe for him. In the presence of the xuǎnzé de xiōngdì and his army, Moshan’s soldiers could not get up to mischief as a result of their sudden shaken faith in him--they were simply too outnumbered by the Greeks for them to do harm.

Yet this had its own very real downsides. Moshan was used to the style of warfare he and his father had practiced during their campaign against Jochi Khan: fast, mobile, and targeting the heart of the enemy’s war effort, be that their armies or their capital.

In the Roman Empire, it was not as easy to fight in such a way. The distances were just as vast yet harder to traverse with mountains, rivers and forests aplenty. Moreover it was a wealthy and highly technologically advanced land, which meant large and well-made fortifications. Many of the fortresses of the rebels were unassailable by assault, which left slow siege warfare the only option to eliminate them. The Khitans were extremely inexpert at sieges, and favored (as they always had) direct engagement--this left them largely unhelpful to Maurikios, and--if it might be admitted--bored. The last thing Moshan wanted was for his men to be bored.

Eventually in May of 1264 forces under the command of Pantherios Markunios, a Greek man who had adopted the Turkic customs of the Anatolian hinterland, attacked at Nikomedeia in order to dislodge the Emperor, and finally permitted some excitement in the process. Yet the battle was over rapidly, and the Basileus, having proved victorious, was forced suddenly to march hard to the northwest, as word had arrived at Constantinople that a raiding party from the Duke of Ragusa had begun to terrorize the Serb hinterland.

Frustrated but still utterly incapable of operating as an independent army, Moshan was dragged along on this glorified partisan-hunting expedition. Neither he nor Maurikios would turn their attention back to the ongoing rebellion until the following year.

It was not difficult for Maurikios to put down the Ragusan invasion, even though their army numbered some 10,000 souls and was primarily composed of well-trained mercenaries. Although a few thousand men of the combined Khitan-Greek army were killed during the engagement, Maurikios--especially with the aid of Unkut Robin, the commander who had replaced the Basileus in the Khitan armies, and who almost approached him in skill--proved easily able to outmaneuver and smash the various mercenary companies, unaccustomed as they were to coordinating closely with one another. The issue was simply terrain: it was not easy to move within the Empire, and the campaign to put down the Ragusans and return to the front lines of the rebellion took over six months.

During this long period, the Khitans were restless. Under normal circ*mstances none would have had issue with dying in the name of the xuǎnzé de xiōngdì, but these were far from normal circ*mstances. The might of the Huangdi was in question, and the Imperial Army had been effectively rendered useless from the defeat at Khliara. They wanted to regain their honor--and the proof that Moshan was an effective and worthy field commander.

When Maurikios finally turned the army back east towards Constantinople and he found it held against him, then, Moshan knew that he would have to go into battle personally.

“You are a dwarf, Moshan. You cannot mount a horse,” Maurikios sighed in exasperation. “You expect me to let you fight?”

“You aren’t my liege,” Moshan said flatly, “and you have no right to tell me not to. There are mutterings in the camp about my right to rule, Maurikios. I am in danger of being toppled by them if I cannot prove my worth. I must ride out, or I am at risk of never riding back home.”

It was dangerous, of course--extremely so. Moshan was forced to ride into battle on his pony, and even though he had a well-crafted saddle that kept him upright, well-made armor and an incredible facility with melee combat simply through training, he had only ever actually fought a man once before, when he took to the field during the Polish Uprising.

It is no surprise, then, that he did not perform well. He scored no kills, and even suffered a badly bruised eye from a glancing blow with a mace to his helmet. But his stunt proved what he wanted it to to his men: he was brave in the face of danger, as all good Khitan were, and he would not let them suffer defeat and death without also risking the same things himself. Even if the Army was still dismayed and sullen in the main, it was no longer quietly rebellious. The Di Yi Taisi had proven what he needed to prove.

The army of 5,000 men under Bishop Argyros was one of the last effective fighting forces that Theocharistos had, and with its defeat there were no longer any significant field armies to place the Khitans at risk. Without needing Maurikios’s force to guard against mutiny and the threat of enemies, Moshan finally broke the Imperial Army off from his friend’s force and went back to the strategy of war he was most familiar with: lightning strikes at the enemy’s weakest points.

Several of Theocharistos’s rebel strongholds, particularly in Nikomedeia, were held by only a few dozen men at most, a sufficiently weak number that even devastated as it was the Imperial Army could reliably assault and capture them. With the only rebel outposts close enough to Constantinople to serve as a threat removed, the rebellion was as good as ended. By June of that year, Theocharistos was in chains.

At the end of the Second Maurician Revolt, only 850 men of the Imperial Army remained, the rest of Moshan’s ragged force consisting of levies from what few loyal vassals he had. This was to have massive implications for the Army itself, and indeed recent scholarship has begun to shift to referring to four distinct Imperial Armies: the Imperial Army under Agdji’s day, which would more properly be considered the Huangdi's nomadic host rather than a conventional standing army; the Imperial Army established by Agdji II’s wife the Lady Huei during the reign of her husband, formed from a nucleus of hardened veterans of Daweizu’s old steppe army; the Third Army, Moshan’s reconstructed Imperial Army following the near-total eradication of the Second Army; and the Great Imperial Army--an entirely different construct, and a subject for the distant future.

Although the Second Imperial Army had not been a true standing army, it was not levied either. During the reign of Agdji II, Huei had reformed the Imperial Army significantly, with a focus on creating a large and powerful force which did not cost the exorbitant amount to maintain that the army had during Daweizu’s period. Her solution was a hybrid standing/levy model, where men of the Imperial Army were not levied as such; the Imperial bureaucracy knew who every soldier was, and knew where they were, but those men did not spend their entire lives at the beck of the state; in peacetime, they were their own men. Given over to the farming of sprawling “Warrior’s Estates” on the outskirts of the capital, the soldiery was obligated to train two days a week with their cohort, but otherwise were given over to agriculture during peacetime. Whatever wealth they made during their 20 year tenure in the army was theirs to keep upon the end of their term of service, and once they had fulfilled their obligations the Huangdi would provide them with a plot of land to call their own, in addition to allowing two months leave for ten men of their choosing (provided the Jin Khidan Zhou was at peace) in order to celebrate their friend’s ‘graduation’ from the army, as well as to assist him in building his new homestead.

Huei’s model was highly effective at maintaining a well-trained and elite soldiery, as well as encouraging comradery between men--who didn’t want to be among those ten who were given leave upon the end of a friend’s term of service? But it struggled at reducing costs, as one of the privileges given to the soldiers was exemption from taxation, and the state was also forced to pay for the cost of farmhands to maintain the homesteads of the men of the army when they were away on campaign, at cost to Huangjin Zhongxin. The army was cheaper and better-trained than in Daweizu’s day, but not so significantly as Huei had hoped. It would fall to Moshan to try to reform it further.

As Moshan and his men wearily made their way to Constantinople to a great feast for them which had been called for by Maurikios, surprising news reached him by runner from the capital. Siaugu had sent word that both Siau Uldjin and--far more shockingly--Moshan’s brother Abo had proved willing to convert.

In both cases she had been forced to provide them with exorbitant honors, though by far Abo was the worst there--he had requested guardianship of Moshan’s son and heir-presumptive Jiesu; the post of Tayangu, overseeing the state treasury; one of the ancient relics of China (a painting from the Qin Dynasty); a massive state gift and banquet; proclamation as Moshan’s chosen heir until such a time as the next electoral moot might be called; and a further title of horse-master. But, in the end, with all of these gifts presented he consented to willingly put aside Tengrism and to both acknowledge the sins of Agdji II and proclaim his brother rightful Huangdi.

Both conversions came as an extreme surprise to Moshan. Although he was more willing to accept that, surrounded by Catholic Poles, the Siau might have come to their senses and converted, he had never expected it of Abo.

Out of all of his brothers, he had one of the most limited relationships with Abo. By the time Moshan had been in favor with the court Abo had already been proclaimed Lord of the Sandomierz, and Moshan rarely saw him except at state functions. He had much closer relationships with his half-brother Aerlu’or, or even Diluguin’s insane final son by Moshan’s sister, Diluguin. And so why did he convert?

A common historical quip about the period of the Maurikian Revolts is that both the Jin Khidan Zhou and the Roman Empire converted, and both paid the price in blood. But only one state paid the price in devastation.

This is only a pithy phrase, and does not truly capture the intricacies of the religious loyalties of the time. Yet it does capture at least a vague reality; the Khitan Imperial Army and the state’s levies had been shattered--the Khitans DID bleed--but, after the first brief rebellion of Tabuyen, they faced no more rebels at home for many a long year. With all of the arch-Tengrists under house arrest there was an insufficient base from which to coalesce a rebellion, even after the massive defeat at Khliara. And, as time passed, many of those who were recalcitrant, as well as those like Uldjin who had been among the rebels but who once again yearned for freedom, were willing to foreswear their old lives and stand forth as Moshan’s men.

Why this was is inadequately studied, although there are clues. Abo was almost certainly simply bought with power, though in temperament he was akin to Moshan and the two men would begin to grow much closer. But what of Uldjin, and of Dorhan? The implication here might be surprising: they began to see Moshan as honorable.

Medieval Khitan culture respected honor immensely and used it as a guide for determining the trustworthiness of an individual. To this point in his reign, Moshan had only shown his nobles a willingness to lie and use underhanded tactics to get his way: pardoning the guilty Polish lords behind the Uprising, misleading his vassals about his conversion at Rome, the secret baptism of Jiesu, and lending out the Imperial Army to Maurikios without committing himself to the campaign. To traditional Khitan sensibilities, Moshan looked like a rake. Yet his diligent adherence to the alliance with Maurikios even at cost to himself seemingly began to sway many of his reluctant bannermen, who began to consider him an honorable ruler--and, as medieval Khitan culture would thereby conclude, an honest man who would not lie about the crimes of Agdji II.

Constantinople was bedecked in flowers and finery. The entire city smelled of perfume and spice from miles away, and its gates were thrown wide for the bedraggled Khitan host. Maurikios’s great black standard fluttered above the gate, its golden characters naming him the xuǎnzé de xiōngdì, róngyù de Qìdān--brother by choice, Khitan by honor.

The Basileus himself stood in front of the gate in full finery, with his loyal nobles seated behind him. He bowed to his friend slightly from the back of his great war-horse and hailed the Khitans behind him as friends and brothers.

“You call me brother, but you have proven yourselves brothers to Rome in turn,” he spoke to them in their own tongue. “I am both Roman and Khitan, and now so too are you both Khitan and Roman. I will not have it said by any that those who fight and bleed for Rome are forgotten by her. Your honor will now be repaid.”

The Basileus turned and led the small Khitan party through the twisting streets. Yet to Moshan’s surprise his friend did not lead them to Blachernae as he had anticipated, but to the Hagia Sophia.

There, standing in full frock and twitching nervously, was Maurikios’s new court bishop, Eusebios. And it was immediately obvious why he was so nervous: in his hands he held one of the greatest treasures which Christendom had ever come to possess. Preserved in a great circular reliquary of golden-hued glass and encircled by three bands of gold to represent the trinity sat the Crown of Thorns of Jesus Christ.

“Maurikios--” Moshan began, but the Basileus cut him off.

“You are my brother, Moshan,” he said. “You gave me this seat, and you’ve kept me on it twice. You and yours are more Roman than most of my own kin. I am not giving it away; I am giving it to one of my own. Take it.”

“I do not need one of the holiest relics you possess to show me that I am your brother,” the Huangdi grunted in exasperation. “You do not need to prove anything to me, Maurikios. I know that you would do the same for me as I have done for you.”

Maurikios’s eyes were sad for but a moment and the impression passed, as if it had never been there. “Even so,” he said softly, “if I have nothing to prove to you, I have something to prove to your people, and to my own. I will not be called ungrateful.”

And so Moshan, with supreme reluctance, stepped forth to the altar of one of the greatest churches in Christendom, and, with Eusebios bowing before him, gently took possession of the Crown of Thorns--and the Imperial title of Kaisar. A title that only the closest of family were permitted to hold.

Moshan left the Empire incredibly touched, moving north with his ragged band with sorrow at yet another parting with his friend, but also with purpose. He had been absent from the Jin Khidan Zhou for four full years, and it was past time that he return and recall the Conclave to formally fulfill the Khitan entry to the faith. He also yearned to see Siaugu, and was privately worried about Jiesu--he had not seen the boy in almost a half-decade! He would be approaching manhood now, and with little enough influence from his father.

Unfortunately, for all the flowery finality of the ceremony in Constantinople, the Maurician Revolts were not yet over. Theocharistos died in Maurikios’s dungeons of the pneumonia from which he had been suffering on and off for years, without Maurikios having significantly reduced the might of his holdings. His son Trajanus II was free, and the moment that Maurikios’s forces rode to Attaleia to demand his submission, he raised his banner in rebellion.

Yet Moshan absolutely could not come to Maurikios’s aid immediately this time. The Imperial Army was so gutted that he would not be able to raise it again for years, and indeed he returned to Huangjin Zhongxin from December through March merely to see to the beginnings of its re-manning, as well as, briefly, to visit with his family. During that time he called forth his vassal levies and raised the Teutonic Order to serve as the core of his new army, and by early April he was on the roads south again, marching to the Empire’s defense.

In the Third Maurician Revolt Moshan was no longer inclined to take chances. The Teutons were fully involved in the fight, and Moshan even permitted his strategically brilliant but physically weak younger brother, Agdji, to participate in the conflict, despite his antipathy. Agdji was closely watched by Moshan’s personal guard, and no less than two assassination attempts were foiled. Yet even so Agdji was an expert strategist despite his physical failings, a natural in a way Moshan could never aspire to be; his clumsy attempts on Moshan's life were tolerated in exchange for his expert assistance in battle.

Though it was not immediately clear if the Khitan needed it, even without the Imperial Army in the field. Although relatively few of Theocharistos Nemanjic’s lands had been seized following his capture, some had been and Trajanus was at a clear disadvantage in the conflict. Robin recommended a direct strike against Trajanus’s capital at Attaleia with no delay, in the hopes of simply capturing the Emperor and his family and having done with the tiresome cycle of rebellions.

It was not quite so easy as that, yet it was not difficult either. Moshan did not have the luck of capturing Trajanus himself, but he was able to capture his seat, as well as his wife and two children. As Maurikios rampaged through Basbuga Orhan’s territory in Klarjeti to the northeast, Moshan captured the remainder of Attaleia and Lykia, firmly shattering Trajanus’s power base and--hopefully--once and for all putting the Maurician Revolts to an end.

Nevertheless, as security, Moshan retained possession of Trajanus’s two young children as a guarantee of his good behavior. Maurikios had him imprisoned, but his compliance with the demands of the Basileus would undoubtedly be smoothed by Moshan’s firm control of his son and heir, Theocharistos.

The end of the Third Revolt marked almost six years of constant warfare--if it can be believed, the longest single campaign in Khitan history, going back all the way to Dashi’s arrival in Emil in 1132. The effects were brutal: on the army, the state’s treasury, on Moshan’s mental state, and, most notably, on the Conclave.

Originally recessed in July of 1261 for just two months (Moshan had at first requested only one!) the Second Conclave was now in effect a dead letter, with many of the rulers and bishops who had been present having either been overthrown, embroiled in new conflicts, or passing on. Unfortunately, among this number was Urban IV.

Moshan’s close friend had passed in mid-April, just a few weeks away from being able to hear of the (hopefully) final Roman victory and the call for the Conclave to reconvene. It was a most bitter and lamentable death--though their friendship was still strong, the Huangdi had not had a chance to speak to him in several years prior to his passing. Still, for his strong political control of the Church, successful Fifth Crusade and the mending of the Schism, Urban was nearly instantly proclaimed a Saint, to Moshan’s great pleasure.

Unfortunately, Urban’s successor Victor IV is an unflattering figure. Rumored to be insane and barely literate, it is unclear to the Huangdi why the College of Cardinals favored such an uninspiring man. It’s possible that they simply wanted someone whom they can control following the strong and centralizing Papacy of Urban, but it suggests that there could be limited support for the Khitans upon the reconvening of the Conclave--Victor is an uncertain figure, with unclear loyalties and goals.

Unfortunately, among the many features of the world which had changed in the past six years was the stability of the Kingdom of Hungary vis-à-vis the It-Oba Khanate.

Kopti “Slayer of Mongols,” Khan of the It-Oba, is a vile and despicable man, though nevertheless respected by the Khitans due to his epithet, if nothing else. But the white peace between himself and Mozes of Hungary in early 1262 following his first unsuccessful foray into Hungarian territory has left him without means to prove himself, and with too little grazing-land for his herds. Still dreaming of replicating the feats of his great ancestor Bachman “the Tormentor,” who first conquered Hungary in 1155, Kopti has summoned his riders again and once more threatens the rule of the Arpad dynasty.

Sadly, Mozes is in no position to resist them. One of Maurikios’s vassals has declared war on Mozes for control of Temes and has roundly beaten the King, leaving him with few levies and little support. If nothing is done, it is likely that, for the third time, Hungary will fall to the control of the Qipchaq.

Though he is tired, though he misses his family, though he yearns for the conclusion to the Conclave and the end of never-ending uncertainty… this Moshan cannot allow. Kopti is still a Tengrist heretic, and he will not allow a Christian state to fall. Moshan has hardly reached the borders of Galich before he has summoned the army once more--and this time, the newly-trained core of the Third Imperial Army also.

This move proves to be eerily fortuitous, as Moshan is already in position, his levies organizing and the Teutonic Order sallying forth, when Maurikios calls him forth to put down the Fourth Maurician Revolt. The hope that Rome had beaten down the Orthodox heretics once and for all appears to have been unfounded.

Even so, their cause is clearly weakening. Historians note that, over time, the Maurician revolts became more and more desperate--and pointless--as the stranglehold of Maurikios’s authority expanded. The first two revolts are largely understood to be serious challenges to the Emperor’s authority which were backed by Theocharistos Nemanjic’s large holdings and broad popular and noble support. Yet after the first two revolts failed and Theocharistos died, the revolts lost much of their popular backing, just as the Nemanjic lost most of their territories and political clout.

The Third Maurician revolt was a desperate attempt by Trajanus II to retain his religion, which he failed in--Maurikios forced him to convert as a precondition to his release from prison. But now, even though Moshan still holds his children, Trajanus has called forth his banners again, this time to protect himself against what he decries as unjust impositions from Constantinople: attempts to seize his last remaining territories. A desperate resistance, yes, but also a puerile and likely futile one; the Basileus’s authority is now too great to resist.

But, regardless, Moshan as before pledges his participation in the conflict. As soon as the Nemanjic are done away with once and for all, the constant revolving door of revolt can--one hopes--be finished for good.

Unbeknownst to Moshan, though he orders no harm to come of Trajanus’s son Theocharistos, Siaugu has his throat slit two months after Moshan marches back south, bound for Magyarorszag.

The It-Oba never faced the Khitan during the days of Daweizu. In those years, under the wise leadership of Bonek I, the It-Oba carefully and cautiously expanded only at the expense of enemies of the Khitan, chiefly the Tatran, at first enemies of Daweizu, then allies, and back to being their fiercest enemies again. Bonek always showed deference and respect to the Khitan, including being one of the first to convert to Agdji’s syncretic Tengrism and to declare Christians welcome within his Khanate, and his realm was left entirely unmolested during his reign and the reign of his successors as a result. Indeed, during the reigns of Agdji II, Ago and Diluguin, the It-Oba were seen as powerful friends and allies guarding the southern passes near the Mountain of Dreams.

No longer. The threat posed by these marauding horse-lords has grown great, and the influence of Huangjin Zhongxin in their affairs too weak; following the rumors of the collapse of the Imperial Army and over six years of hard war, they suppose that Moshan is indeed as weak as they always believed him to be.

But Moshan was a man of learning. When he makes mistakes, he studies and rectifies them. His failing in 1265 had been pushing his men too hard, through disease and exhaustion to a fight in scorching sand. In 1268, he did not make the same mistake. His men, particularly the core of the Third Imperial Army, had had a rest, however brief, and were marching close to their supply lines in the Jin Khidan Zhou.

If one was being polite, one could call the Qipchaq unprepared. They did not fight across the steppe, learning every technique and tactic there was to know along the way. They had absorbed only the lessons of war with the Roman Empire, and while this did give them a mighty infantry core, it left them with cavalry which was anemic compared to the strong core one would expect from a nomadic people, and the efficacy of which was further sapped by the need to match the infantry’s slower speed. They did not even have cataphracts. It was no challenge to teach the It-Oba who their real masters were.

Moshan followed up the victory at Besenyo by crossing the Carpathians via the pass at Barcasag into Baka and capturing the yurts of Beg Sircan Turani, one of the most powerful vassals of the Khan. From there it was trivial to move east and capture Basarabia itself, breaking the ability of Khan Kopti to resist and forcing an immense indemnity to be paid to King Mozes, in addition to hundreds of ducat-weights of gold in ransom paid to Moshan, as well as securing a guarantee from Kopti that he would no longer strike out against his fellow Christians. Moshan would have forced a more certain peace by unseating Kopti, but there was not time--the rebellion within the Empire was ongoing, and his presence was needed in Rome.

Still, there were clear benefits to the decision to support the Hungarians, despite the distraction from the Fourth Maurician Revolt--aside from earning the lasting support and appreciation of the Arpad dynasty for their selfless sacrifice, it was a very profitable venture. For the past seven years the treasury had only just been holding on, but with the capture of so many steppe nobles who could be ransomed back to their lords, soon the treasury would be made full to bursting again, enabling building projects to finalize the defenses of Huangjin Zhongxin upon Moshan’s return.

It is fitting that confidence in the Khitans was restored where it was first shaken, in Khliara.

The rebellions against Maurikios had been growing weaker every revolt, and by the fourth it was only the last dregs of the assembled coalition left. Still, much like a boxing match, even the hardiest of opponents can become exhausted after a protracted fight, and Maurikios’s state had begun to show real signs of fatigue. The Basileus could no longer afford mercenaries, and had been forced to take several loans to keep his books in the black. His opponents, meanwhile, bet everything upon their victory and took multiple loans in order to pay for mercenaries, enough to place their armies on significantly firmer footing than that of their opponent.

Unfortunately for these rebels, Moshan was not in a tolerant mood. They had kept him from his family, his state, and his faith for almost a full decade of petty revolts. Although Moshan never descended to the level his father had when he exterminated the Mongols at Muqshi, he nevertheless ordered that there should be no mercy and no quarter--the instruction was to firmly, brutally, and finally break the back of the rebel coalition so that there could be no Fifth Maurician Revolt.

This the army took to with gusto, with the enemy commander Photios Adralestos proving wholly incapable of resisting the extremely well-trained Khitan leadership, even with the as-yet-unproven core of the Imperial Army poorly-trained compared to the might of the Second Army. The rebel coalition was beaten terribly at Khliara, far worse than they had blooded Moshan’s force during the first battle of that name.

“Break every fortification,” the Huangdi instructed, “and keep breaking them until we have a Nemanjic in hand.”

Historians of the Medieval Roman Empire characterize the first four Maurician Revolts not as a series of separate wars, but a continuous campaign which had four distinct phases. A common phrase runs that, “the first phase crippled their finances; the second stole their family; the third took their faith; the last claimed their freedom.” This is a fair, albeit somewhat trivialized, contextualization of the situation--the first revolt cost a tremendous amount of lives and funds which were difficult to recover, while the second led directly to the death of Theocharistos I, and indirectly to the death of the would-be Theocharistos II through Moshan’s capture of the new Lord Nemanjic’s heir in the Third Revolt. The Third led to Trajanus II being forced to foreswear his faith, while finally the Fourth Revolt brought Trajanus to Constantinople in chains and left he and his supporters destitute and reviled by a realm which had suffered a decade of war at their instigation.

With the capture of Tranjanus II, the Roman Empire, albeit still facing the serious problem of a half-dozen major lords who refused to foreswear Orthodoxy, in the main stabilized with the support of the rule of the new Catholic lords which Maurikios rose up from the gutted demesne of the Nemanjic. The Maurician Revolts were finally over--for now.

“Do not take this the wrong way, brother, but I hope to never see your city again for so long as I live,” Moshan quipped to him upon his fourth departure.

Maurikios laughed heartily, a full-bellied bellow which reminded Moshan nostalgically of his father. “I understand,” he chuckled. “But you will always be welcome. And I will see you soon, I hope, at the Conclave. Your business is unfinished, and I owe you too many debts now to repay. I will stand with you when you face the assembled lords.”

The Huangdi smiled politely. He did not insult his friend by saying that the support of a Rome which had been in a civil war for a decade would likely not count for much.