Wolf Totem: A Novel (15 page)

The greater half of the carnage site had been cleared. Carcasses lay all over the frozen lake, with its bloodred ice. Broken limbs were strewn everywhere, as on a battlefield after heavy bombardment. The two horse herders sat on their heels on the ice, cleaning the heads of their favorite horses with fur-lined sleeves and the hems of their deels, weeping nonstop. Every man in the party was stunned by the miserable scene. Chen Zhen and other students who had never witnessed the bloody results of battle or the aftermath of a wolf attack stared at each other, their faces turned ashen by visceral fright.

The old man’s displeasure was obvious. “You Chinese are poor horsemen. When the riding gets rough, you can’t even stay in the saddle.”

Not used to being reproached by Bilgee, Chen understood the implication in the old man’s comment. The wolf totem occupied a more unshakable place in his soul than a skillful rider on a Mongol horse. After thousands of years, during which unknown numbers of minor races had died out or were violently displaced, the grasslanders would never question their predatory totem, which would remain their sole icon even after killing seventy or eighty fine horses. Chen was reminded of the sayings “The Yellow River causes a hundred calamities but enriches all it touches”; “When the Yellow River overflows its banks, the people become fish and turtles”; “The Yellow River—our Mother River”; and “The Yellow River—cradle of the Chinese race.” The Chinese would never deny that the Yellow River was the cradle of the Chinese race or that it was crucial to the survival and development of their race even if it sometimes overflows its banks and swallows up acres of cropland and thousands of lives. The grasslanders’ wolf totem deserved to be revered in the same manner.

Bao Shungui, who had stopped shouting commands, rode around to get a fuller picture of the carnage. As Bao took photographs of the scene, Chen Zhen noticed his hands trembling violently; he was having trouble keeping his camera steady.

Bilgee and Uljii were shoveling snow in an area where several rendered carcasses lay, digging here and poking there, as if looking for evidence. Chen Zhen hurried over to give them a hand. “What are you looking for, Papa?” he asked.

“The path the wolves took,” the old man replied. “We need to proceed carefully.”

Chen bent over and, stepping carefully, helped them look. It didn’t take long. There on the ground they spotted a path where the snow was tightly packed atop the frozen mud. After it was swept clean of the powdery snow that had settled on it, they saw wolf prints as large as an ox hoof and as small as a large dog’s paw print. There were traces of blood in some of the heel marks.

Uljii and Bilgee called the others over to help clear the snow from the wolf path; according to Bilgee, what they learned from the path would bring them closer to the size of the pack. As the path was gradually revealed, they saw it was curved, not straight, and farther along they noted that it became a semicircle. It took more than an hour to clear away the entire length of the path, and to learn that it ran in a complete circle, a circle of ice and blood, of red-stained snow that was as thick as a fist; the black and red frozen mud and red ice was a terrifying sight, like a sort of demonic writing. Shocked to their core, the men shuddered as they discussed what they’d found.

“I’ve lived a long time, but I’ve never seen this many wolf prints in one place.”

“This wasn’t a wolf pack; it was a gang of fiends.”

“The numbers are scary.”

"Forty or fifty at least.”

Batu, you’ve got guts, going up against this pack. If it’d been me, I’d have been scared off my horse and straight into the bellies of those wolves.”

“It was dark that night, and snow was falling; I couldn’t see a thing. How was I to know how big the pack was?” Batu said.

“This will make things tough on our pastureland from now on.”

“The women won’t dare go out walking at night.”

“Damn those idiots at headquarters for pillaging the food the wolves had put away for the lean days of spring. That’s why they were on the trail of revenge. I’d have done the same thing if I’d been their alpha male. But I’d have gone after their pigs and chickens.”

“Headquarters can do something right for a change by organizing a wolf hunt. If we don’t kill them now, we’re next on their menu.”

“I vote for fewer meetings and more wolf hunts.”

“The way they gorged themselves this time, it looks like we might not have enough animals to satisfy their appetites.”

“People from farmlands have been shipped in as leaders of our pastureland, and everything they do is wrong. Tengger sent the wolves as a lesson to us.”

“Watch what you’re saying, or the next criticism session will be for you.”

Bao Shungui examined the path with Bilgee and Uljii, stopping to talk with the two local men as he took pictures. His face gradually relaxed, and Chen Zhen suspected that Bilgee had said some things relaxed, and Chen Zhen suspected that Bilgee had said some things to undermine his concept of "man as the primary element.” Was man able to successfully resist this killer wolf attack, this natural disaster? You can send all the inspection teams you want, but one look at the carnage here is enough to convince you that man was powerless to keep this from happening, especially when you factor in the blizzard. Chen’s concern for Uljii and Batu gradually lessened.

He turned to a closer scrutiny of the wolf path. The strange circular shape made his hair stand on end; it wrapped itself around his heart, as if a pack of wolf sprites were racing inside his chest, until he could hardly breathe. Why a circle? What were they trying to do? What was their goal? Grassland wolves were impossible to figure out. Every clue to their behavior presented a new puzzle.

Was it to keep out the cold? Did running somehow warm them?

Or was it to aid their digestion? Burning off excess energy might have increased their need for horseflesh. That too was possible. Unlike other grassland creatures, such as ground squirrels and golden prairie dogs, wolves do not store up food. What they can’t eat from a kill, they leave, so in order to get the most out of their kills, they gorge themselves until they can eat no more. Then they run to facilitate digestion and store up as much nutrition as possible, emptying their stomachs to go back and eat more.

Or was it a dress parade for future battles? Even that was possible. The tracks made it clear that the wolves were organized and highly disciplined. From end to end the path was a little more than a yard in width, and there were hardly any tracks outside it. If that wasn’t a march of troops in review, what was it? Chen was thinking. Wolves often fight alone, though they also hunt in small packs of three to five or do their plundering in families of eight to ten. What occurred here, with a small army of wolves, was rare. They had decided to organize themselves into a field army for mobile warfare. During the war years in China, the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies underwent a large-scale makeover, a Herculean task. Did this sort of reorganization come naturally to wolves?

Then again, was it a victory celebration? Or signs of wild ecstasy preceding a grand feast? That was even more likely. In this murderous attack, they’d butchered every horse. Not one got away. Revenge. Slaking hatred. Total victory. An unburdening. How could they not celebrate the killing of so many horses? The level of excitement must have been fanatical as they surrounded the large cluster of trapped horses and performed their death dance.

Chen discovered that by considering wolves’ behavior from a human perspective, some of the puzzling behaviors could be reasoned out logically. Dogs display human characteristics, men display wolf characteristics, or vice versa. Heaven, earth, and man are a unity; it’s impossible to categorically separate men, dogs, and wolves. Otherwise, how does one explain the fact that there were so many overlapping latent human traces found at the site of this horrible carnage? When confronting one another, all humans turn into wolves as an article of faith.

As the line of men and horses followed Batu north away from the scene of the incident, Chen drew up next to Bilgee. “Papa,” he asked, “why did the wolves make that path?”

The old man looked around and reined in his horse so they could fall back behind the other members of the party. “I’ve lived more than sixty years on the Olonbulag,” he said softly, “and I’ve seen wolf circles like that a few times before. I asked that same question of my father once. He told me that Tengger sent wolves down to the grassland as protectors of the Bayan Uul sacred mountain and the Olonbulag. Tengger and the sacred mountain are angered anytime the grassland is endangered, and wolves are sent to kill and consume the offenders. Every time they receive this gift, they joyfully run circles around it until they’ve tramped out a path as round as the sun and the moon. That circular path is their acknowledgment to Tengger, a sort of thank-you note. Once the acknowledgment has been received, the feast begins. Wolves are known for baying at the moon, which is their call to Tengger. If a halo appears around the moon, a wind will blow that night and the wolves will be on the move. They are better climatologists than we are. They make circles to mirror those in the sky. In other words, they are in perfect sync with the heavens.”

Chen Zhen, a fan of popular legends, was delighted. “Fascinating,” he said, “utterly fascinating. The sun can be ringed by a halo, so can the moon, and when herdsmen signal to someone far off they make a circle in the air with their arm. The circle does seem to be a spiritual sign. What you’re telling me makes my hair stand on end. That the wolves out here are so mystical they make circles as signs to Tengger is downright creepy.”

“They are supernatural,” the old man said. “I’ve dealt with them all my life and I’ve always come out second best. But even I never anticipated something like this. Wolves appear when and where you least expect them, and often in overwhelming numbers. How can anyone think they could be so potent without the help of Tengger?”

The men up ahead stopped; some dismounted and began digging in the snow. Chen and Bilgee spurred their horses to catch up. There were more carcasses, but scattered helter-skelter in fours and fives. Suddenly, someone shouted, “Wolf! There’s a dead wolf here!”

“According to Batu, this must have been where the wolves made their suicidal attack on the horses’ bellies,” Chen surmised, “and where the tide of battle turned, the beginning of the end for the horses.” His heart began racing, faster and faster.

Bao Shungui waved his whip in the air and shouted from the saddle, “Don’t go running off. Come back here, all of you. Dig up a couple of these horses. Horses first, wolves last.”

They all gathered around and began digging.

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.”