Chapter 64: Banner
There were roughly two hundred people in the caravan traveling their way.
At the front of the caravan were the Hu merchants riding horses and dressed in leather coats and felt hats, followed by two orderly rows of horse carts. A group of people on camels followed at the rear, with guards carrying scimitars on their waists on either side of the caravan. Several fast horses weaved back and forth throughout the caravan to keep watch.
When they discovered that dust suddenly rose in huge clouds from the south, the guards immediately reacted. They loudly whistled, drew their scimitars, and adopted a defensive formation.
They had been walking through the dangerous Gobi desert for many years and had early on gotten accustomed to fighting on horseback whenever. Unfortunately, they were not facing ordinary bandits this time, but the fiercest warriors of the Yelu tribe.
Yaoying got off the carriage and mounted a horse, galloping to the highest point of the hill, and witnessed a bloody massacre on the plains.
The Eldest Prince tore directly through the caravan’s defensive line. His hand lifted and the sword slashed down, killing like chopping vegetables.
In less than half an shichen, the Yelu tribe ended the battle.
The caravan was attacked until nothing was left intact. The guards fell one by one under the knives of the Yelu horseman. The Hu merchants gave up their goods and fled, but before they could run a few dozen steps, they were brutally murdered by the pursuing horsemen.
The wind carried the desperate shouting and screaming.
The Eldest Prince cut off a head with a single swipe. Covered in blood, he galloped back to the hillside. He dismounted from his horse and, wiping off the sticky blood on his face, carried several heads dripping with blood. He strode to the carriage.
“Princess, this is my gift to you…”
He laughed loudly. Lifting the heads, he discovered the carriage was empty and paused.
The sound of horse hooves came from behind him.
The Eldest Prince turned around.
The wind whistled by them. Yaoying sat on horseback, still dressed in the attire of a Great Wei’s Princess with her gold and emerald flower inlaid hairpins and ceremonial clothes. Her face was hidden from view with a light veil, and her sleeves fluttered in the wind. The ornamental gems on her gorgeous dress glittered brilliantly, shining with gorgeous light, brimming with bright splendor. In the middle of the vast wilderness, she was all the more colorful and beautfiul.
The faint sunlight poured down through the gloomy sky and embraced Yaoying’s face. She held the reins in her hand, shot a glance at the Eldest Prince and the head he was carrying, her face undisturbed.
Noble and graceful, as if the goddess of the Ninth Heaven had descended to Earth.
It seemed that the killing just now did not scare this delicate Han princess.
The Eldest Prince narrowed his eyes, casually threw the heads aside, and shouted at his soldiers: “Set up camp here!”
With these words, he swung onto his horse and sped back to the flat ground.
All the caravan’s guards were beheaded, and the Hu merchants were also decapitated. The teenagers and the gray-haired elderly could not escape the horsemen’s long swords. Only about twenty beautiful Hu women survived, kneeling in front of the horsemen’s hooves and trembling.
The Eldest Prince circled the women slowly, picked a Hu girl at random, and pulled her onto the back of his horse.
A dozen other warriors, like him, each respectively picked a Hu girl and prepared to enjoy their spoils of war.
Yaoying withdrew her gaze.
Her Hu maidservant Tali was standing beside the Wusun horse. Her eyes were red and she was trembling slightly.
Yaoying said softly, “If you are afraid, go sit in the carriage.”
Tali wiped the corners of her eyes, shook her head, and a sad smile surfaced on her pale face, “Princess, when this slave was twelve years old, I was sold to merchants by my Uncle. At that time, this slave was just like them…”
She pointed to the Hu maidservants kneeling in the cold wind.
“The merchant took us across the desert to Hailong, wanting to sell us to a powerful clan’s household in Liangzhou. On the way, we met robbers. Many people in the caravan died. This slave was bought and sold three or four times, and finally wandered to the Central Plains.”
Whether in the Central Plains or in the Gobi, in the midst of chaos, ordinary and common people could only be at the mercy of others.
Yaoying was emotional in her heart and asked, “Where is your hometown?”
Tali pointed to the west: “This slave has gone too far and cannot remember. This slave only remembers that the merchant took us across the Tamin Chagan Desert.”
Yaoying: “Your hometown is in the Western Regions?”
The Tamin Chagan Desert, located between Xinjiang and the Yumen Pass, was also called the Moheyan Moraine. It was a stretch of quicksand across Izhou and Guazhou with a harsh and arid climate, roaring winds in all seasons, and land where not a single blade of grass grew, so it was also called the “Quicksand River”.
In the eyes of the Han Chinese, the Quicksand River was the starting point of the Western Regions.
Yaoying said, “Tali, the Yelu tribe will not cross the Tamin Chagan. If you follow me, you may not be able to return to your homeland.”
The Yelu tribe would roam around Guazhou all year round. At present, the powerful Tufan and Northern Rong were both covetously eyeing the Western Regions. The Western Regions lacked the strength to fight against them. Only the legendary Buddhist kingdom was still struggling to hold on. That Buddhist monk monarch would not live for many years longer, so the Yelu tribe would not rashly cross the Quicksand River to continue westward.
Tali smiled: “Princess, this slave’s homeland is only a very small city-state. This slave has left my homeland for so many years, my hometown may have long perished. This slave is willing to follow the princess, not to go to the Western Regions, but merely to break away from my slave background and be closer to my homeland. Maybe this slave can find my lost clansmen.”
She exhaled a long breath and turned around. Touching the Wusun horse, she whispered, “Princess, the Yelu tribesmen are different from the Central Plains people who preach poetry and etiquette. They rob everything they can rob, and whenever they loot a caravan or tribe, they kill all the men. Not even the children are left alive, leaving only women and livestock in the end. In their eyes, women are as much their property as livestock and gold and treasures… You must, by no means, ever try to stop the Eldest Prince just because you sympathize with a caravan. In the Yelu tribe, a woman can never stop a man!”
Yaoying smiled lightly, “Tali, many thanks for your advice. I understand my situation. When I arrive at the Yelu tribe, I will no longer be the princess of Great Wei, but the Khanum of the Yelu tribe.”
At present, she was walking on thin ice and was not capable of saving anyone.
Moreover, once she opened her mouth and begged the Eldest Prince, the Eldest Prince would not only show no mercy but would also become more intense, likely abusing and killing those poor women in front of her.
Tali’s face was slightly red. She was a lowly Hu girl; no nobleman had ever thanked her before.
“Princess, you need not worry too much. You are as lovely as a flower, an outstanding beauty. The Yelu Khan will surely obey your words.”
Yaoying, remembering Yelu Khan’s white braided hair and his aged appearance, shut her eyes.
She could not be afraid.
While they were talking, the attendants had already set up the tent.
Yaoying knew that the Eldest Prince had deliberately arranged this. She did not show fear and went back to the tent to rest.
That night, the horrible howling of wolves kept echoing down the slope.
When they left the next day, the ground was strewn with corpses that had been devoured by wild beasts.
The caravan’s women were at the end of the group. When they saw the corpses, they covered their faces and sobbed.
Yesterday, they were sitting on the back of camels singing a cheerful Liangzhou ditty.
A night had passed and their sky had been turned upside down.