Autumn's Final Dynasty

Great Yao's Northwest Territory was wild and free. For every man, woman, and child living on its land, a hundred buffalo grazed the terraced foothills of the Jormu Mountains. Called Taller Than The Sky in an ancient tongue, the Jormu Mountains protected the middle world from a murderous Northern Sea. Inagumi-no-kami Baltukhasar was as wild as the territory he called home. He had done shameful things as a prince, but with abolishment came freedom.

The Second Prince was not as pretty as his brothers. Baltukhasar's feral body and hard face did not belong in a palace. The Emperor's marriage to the Fourth Consort had made sense at the time. Once the Strife of Ten Brothers and One Tyrant had concluded, however, the witch Altantsetseg and her son returned to the high mountain plains.

Back where he belonged, Baltukhasar and his deputies followed the River Aleph.

The Aleph began as a glacier above the air. Twisting like a dragon, it wound down through the Jormu Mountains until it emerged on a plateau near Jian Peak Abbey. In an antediluvian age, giants shaped the Northwest Territory's plateaus into broad, graceful terraces. "Antediluvian" was a word the Crown Prince would use. The consensus among scholars was that the giants formed the terraces to improve agricultural yields.

As Circuit Chief of Aleph Basin, Baltukhasar enforced the Emperor's Law even if he was no longer a prince. The Northwest Territory had transformed from a land of warlords to a land of ranchers and herdsmen who occasionally went to war.

Where there were herds, there was rustling.

Inagumi-no-kami Baltukhasar and his men trailed a caravan that was driving buffalo, cattle, and sheep to grey markets. Mixed between wagons full of poached elk and ivory, however, were the victims of greed. The Emperor's Law had always envisioned a market for prison labor. But brokers from Tianming Town had taught mountain herdsmen they could sell options on indenturing contracts. If exercised, the individual holding the option could take a herdsman's daughters to serve as maids and laborers for the nobility back east.

Baltukhasar objected to the scheme.

For most of its descent, the River Aleph flowed shallow and fast. After leaving the foothills, however, its channel deepened. From there it was still two hundred miles to the Feng River, but traveling on barges was less work than hauling wagons.

Located where the Aleph deepened, the town of Gol-Gunzgir expanded from both banks of the river. The Northwest Territory exported most granite and sandstone used to build anything in Great Yao. Despite that, almost all structures in Gol-Gunzgir were made of wood and mud brick. The city was growing too fast for stone. It didn't even have walls. Twenty years ago, that would not have been feasible. But the Emperor had ended the reign of warlords. When not warring with a neighbor over where to put a fence, ranchers and herdsmen drove their livestock across the high plains in peace. 

Walls just got in the way of commerce.

Baltukhasar studied the layout of Gol-Gunzgir from the Aleph's last big drop. Under moonlight, the town was a mad spider's web of timber scaffolding illuminated from within. Several caravanserais lay scattered around the outskirts. From there, livestock corrals funneled animals into a labyrinth of pens, stockyards, and chutes. Everything led to the city's markets, slaughterhouses, and docks. Technically, Baltukhasar's jurisdiction ended at the bottom of the hill. Gol-Gunzgir was considered part of the Greater Feng Basin, not the Aleph Basin.

"Wait here," the Circuit Chief instructed his men.

They saluted.

Baltukhasar dismounted and walked down the hill. The caravan he was after had followed the same path an hour earlier. He knew which caravanserai it would settle at – and how long it would take the "traders" to get drunk. It wasn't necessary for them to be drunk, but Baltukhasar felt it would be kinder to let them go out happy.

As Second Prince, he would not have been so considerate.

After reaching the caravanserai, Baltukhasar examined its pens. Wild buffalo belonged to the Emperor. It was preposterous for any establishment to allow its facilities to be used for keeping them. Cool silver had obviously been pressed into greasy palms. That happened a lot in Gol-Gunzgir. Northern Duke and Western Duke could each claim the other was responsible. Coincidentally, they took the opposite position when it came time to distribute tax revenues. Although the penned cattle did not belong to the Emperor, Baltukhasar knew that they had been stolen.

Two sour men objected to the Circuit Chief snooping around.

A sour man himself, he killed them.

Baltukhasar's mhoddim rating was at best ordinary when compared to that tiny fraction of the population which had any mhoddim rating at all. Numbers mattered, but not as much as people with numbers wanted to believe. Even without a number, Baltukhasar was a ferocious fighter. Knowing where to land elbows, knees, heels, and foreheads, he could crush anyone who relied on mhoddim numbers alone to win fights.

Killing with single punches was hit-or-miss, however, and Baltukhasar was in a hurry. He augmented his strikes with occult sizzle because he could. The sour men were dead before their bodies began to fall. The Circuit Chief made sure those bodies fell quietly, then entered the caravanserai.

His supernatural senses recoiled. It was a foul place.

"You!" yelled a face floating in a bubbling soup of bodies. "Out!"

Someone else threw an ax. Baltukhasar caught the weapon by its blade.

The crowd quieted.

"Poaching buffalo," said the Circuit Chief. "Stealing cattle. Abducting women."

"What nonsense are you saying?" demanded a man in back.

"I'm saying you're all going to die."

According to the Emperor's Law, Baltukhasar was obligated to beat them into unconsciousness, imprison them, torture them until they confessed to the crimes charged, and then hand them over to an executioner for killing. Of course, that was putting aside the fact his jurisdiction stopped at the bottom of the hill outside town.

Laughter from the crowd followed a moment of stunned disbelief.

That laughter ended in a buzzsaw of fists, elbows, knees, and foreheads. Occasionally, Baltukhasar threw in forearms for variety. His mhoddim interface techniques were not the kind that produced light shows. A light show could have cleared out the room's riffraff in a few seconds. As often as not, however, half would just have to be knocked down again. It took Baltukhasar longer to crush rib cages with his bare hands, but nobody got back up again. Finally, only three individuals remained. One was the proud daughter of the Earl of Kadar-Jormu Citadel. The other two were most likely her heavies.

"What are you doing?" demanded the earl's daughter. "We're off the mountain! You had no authority to kill those people!"

"I killed the trash," said Baltukhasar. "Now I'm going to kill you, boss lady."

"For what?" demanded the boss lady.

"Treason," said Baltukhasar.

"Absurd!"

"The Northwest Territory has the lowest population in Great Yao," said Baltukhasar.

"No shit!"

"In the time it takes one woman to have one child," said Baltukhasar, "one man can father hundreds. With respect to preserving our population, therefore, men stealing women so that they can sell them to river plains filth are trash."

He gestured at the dead. The earl's daughter laughed.

"Fine," she said. "What about me?"

"As mentioned previously," said Baltukhasar, "you are a traitor."