As the animals came into view, it was obvious they’d trampled and ripped their own internal organs with their hind legs, spreading them over a great distance. It was also clear that the wolves had left them alone after they’d died. By then they’d probably joined the slaughter on the lake. These latest horses had been given a reprieve of sorts. But to Chen Zhen, who dug along with the others, these horses had died more tragically than those on the lake, their deaths an affront to all. The agony and fear frozen in their dead eyes was more conspicuous than in those of the lake dead.
“These wolves were crueler even than the Japanese devils,” Bao Shungui shouted in anger. “They knew that all they had to do was rip open the bellies and let the horses die under their own hooves. I’ve never seen anything more sinister, more savage in my life. Those wolves embody the spirit of Japanese samurai. Suicidal attacks don’t faze them, and that makes Mongol wolves more fearful than any others. I won’t rest till I kill every last one of them!”
“If a man or a race lacks the death-before-surrender spirit, a willingness to die along with the enemy, then slavery is the inevitable result,” Chen said. “Whoever takes the suicidal spirit of wolves as a model is destined for heroism, and will be eulogized with songs and tears. Learning the wrong lesson leads to samurai fascism, but anyone who lacks the death-before-surrender spirit will always succumb to samurai fascism.”
Bao Shungui held his breath for a moment. “You’ve got a point,” he said.
Uljii, looking grave, said to Bao, “How could Batu and the others have beaten off a diabolical, suicidal attack like this? He fought them from the grazing land up north all the way here. I don’t know how he did it. He survived thanks to the protection of Tengger. Have the inspection teams see this, and I’m sure they’ll reach the right conclusion.”
Bao Shungui nodded his agreement. He turned to Batu. “Weren’t you afraid the wolves would do this to your horse?” he asked in a conciliatory tone.
“I was so fixated on trying to get the herd past the lake, I didn’t have time to think about anything else,” he replied naively. “We came so close.”
“Didn’t the wolves come at you?” Bao asked.
Batu lifted up his herding club, with its iron rings, and showed it to Bao. “I knocked out the fangs of one wolf with this,” he said, “and broke the nose of another. They’d both have gotten me if I hadn’t. Since they didn’t have one of these, Laasurung and the others had no way to protect themselves. They didn’t desert me.”
Bao took the herding club from him and felt its heft. “A good club!” he exclaimed. “A very good club! It takes real ferocity to knock out a wolf’s fangs with this. Good! The fiercer the better, where wolves are concerned. Batu, you’ve got guts, and you know how to fight. When they send the inspection team, I want you to tell them how you fought the wolves, tell them the whole story.”
Bao handed back the herding club and turned to Uljii. “These wolves of yours are supernatural,” he said. “Smarter than humans. I see how they did it. They had a clear goal in mind, to drive the horses into the lake at any cost. Look…” He began counting on his fingers. “Here’s some of what the wolves knew: weather, topography, opportunity, their and their enemy’s strengths, military strategy and tactics, close fighting, night fighting, guerrilla fighting, mobile fighting, long-range raids, ambushes, lightning raids, and concentrating their strength to annihilate the enemy. They made plans, they set goals, and they undertook a measured campaign of total annihilation. It was a textbook battle plan. You and I are military men, and in my view, except for positional and trench warfare, they were as conversant with guerrilla tactics as our Eighth Route Army. I used to think that wolves were foolhardy fighters that went after an occasional sheep or chicken. Obviously, I was wrong.”
“I haven’t felt far from a battlefield since the first day I was sent to work here,” Uljii said. “I fight wolves year-round. I take my rifle with me wherever I go, and I’ve become a better marksman than when I was a soldier. You’re right, the wolves know military strategy and tactics, at least the most important elements. After fighting them for more than a decade, I’ve learned a lot. If I was ordered out on another bandit annihilation campaign, I’d be one of the best.”
“Are you saying that men have learned how to wage war from wolves?” Chen Zhen asked, his interest growing.
Uljii’s eyes lit up. “Yes. Much of what we know about waging war we learned from wolves. In ancient days here on the grassland, the herdsmen fought farming people from down south using tactics they’d learned from wolves. You Chinese learned more from nomadic peoples than how to dress in short clothing, or how to use a bow and arrow on horseback, what you call ‘barbarian attire and horse archery.’ You also learned a lot about warfare. When I was studying livestock farming in Hohhot, I read books on warfare, and in my view there’s little difference between the arts of warfare described by Sun-tzu and those employed by wolves.”
“But there’s no mention of the grassland people or wolves in Chinese books on war,” Chen Zhen said. “That isn’t fair.”
“We Mongols suffer from cultural backwardness,” Uljii replied. “The only book of any value we’ve introduced to the world is The Secret History of the Mongols.”
“Apparently,” Bao said to Uljii, “when you’re engaged in livestock farming out here you need to study wolves and how to wage war. If you don’t, you suffer. It’s getting late. What do you say we go take a look at that dead wolf? I need some more pictures.”
After the two leaders rode off, Chen Zhen leaned on his shovel and stared into space. The battle-site investigation had increased his fascination with the people of the grassland and the military miracles performed by Genghis Khan. How could he and his progeny have swept across Asia and Europe with fewer than a hundred thousand fighters? They exterminated hordes of Western Xia’s armored cavalry, a million troops of the Great Jin, a million waterborne and mounted forces of the Southern Song, the Russian Kipchaks, and the Teutons of Rome. They occupied Central Asia, Hungary, Poland, and all of Russia; they attacked such large civilized nations as Persia, Iran, China, and India. Beyond that, borrowing the Chinese policy of marrying their daughters to minority nationalities, they forced the emperor of Eastern Rome to give the hand of Princess Maria to the great-grandson of Genghis Khan. The Mongols founded the largest empire in the history of the world. How could a nomadic, uncivilized, backward race of people with no writing system, one that used arrows tipped with bone, not steel, be in possession of such advanced military capabilities and wisdom? That was one of the great unanswered questions of history.
Chen’s experience with wolves during his two years on the grassland and the countless tales he’d collected, plus the brilliant annihilation of the gazelle herd he’d witnessed and the classic example of warfare against the herd of horses, had pretty much convinced him that the answer to the military marvels of Genghis Khan lay with the wolves.
On the grassland there are no tigers or leopards or jackals or bears or lions or elephants, Chen Zhen was thinking. They could not survive the brutal climate; but even if they could, they could not adapt to the cruel wars of survival, and would not be able to withstand assaults by grassland wolves and grassland humans, finalists in the heated competition for grassland primacy. Wolves are the only match for humans in the struggle for survival. Although there are wolves nearly everywhere on earth, they are concentrated on the Mongolian grassland, where there are no moats or ramparts, common to advanced agrarian societies, or great walls and ancient fortresses; it is the spot on earth where the longest-lasting struggle between wise and brave combatants-men and wolves-has taken place.