A few days later Han reached out and cut off Western Hun's head with one stroke of his sword. 'Vile Chinese oppressor!' Alp shouted. 'He wasn't bothering you!' But the damage was done. The Hun body shuffled off and hid, not to be heard from again for over a Year.
'Now,' the cartoon narrator explained, 'commences the Christianized dating system. Thirty-five Days after the decapitation of Western Hun a religious figure was born in the far west, in the same general region where Philistine had settled a thousand Days before. This event was not particularly important to Steppe, but the dating system deriving from it has been a convenient reference point for other Games, such as the recent Rome, so will also be employed here.'
It seemed to Alp that the Uigur twelve-day cycle was superior: year of the Lion, year of the Ox, Dragon, Dog... but the matter was unimportant.
About this time—Day 10 in the new scheme—Eastern Hun got back some of the Silk Road, because Han was having some two-headed trouble of his own. But then Hun himself had another attack of this malady. 'Not again!' Alp wailed. He was somewhat disenchanted with Hun, who was showing up as less formidable than anticipated, but still favored him over the Chinese giants. If Alp had been in charge, he would have found some way to humble Han permanently!
Part of Eastern Hun broke off and became Southern Hun, while the rest became Northern Hun. It was Day 48. Both were smaller than the original Hun. Han persuaded a couple of small giants or large dwarves to raid Northern Hun. These traitors were named Wu-huan and Hsien-pi.
'Hsien-pi!' Alp exclaimed, recognizing the name. No dwarf, that!
Northern Hun, weakened by the successive breakoffs of Western and Southern Huns and now attacked from behind by his own kind, was chopped down into dwarf size himself, and no longer represented any threat to Han. The unscrupulous tyrant of the south had successfully divided and conquered the mighty horde of Steppe. Alp shook his head, disgusted.
Now a number of dwarves sprang up along the Silk Road. These were mostly splinters of the Indo-European family, related to Cimmerian and his offspring. Hun belonged to another great family called Turk, the terror of the western steppe. The little traitor Hsien-pi was from a third family, Mongol, more primitive and less important than Turk. Another family, Tungus, had little present power. All these families spoke different languages, but they could work together when they had to, and sometimes even fraternized.
A Month or more passed with constant bickering and minor scraps between Han and one of the Hun brothers, but Han generally had the best of it. In Day 93 he sent the Mongol Hsien-pi to cut Northern Hun down to size again, and around Day 155 the Mongol actually ate the Turk.
'You couldn't have done it when Hun was in his prime!' Alp muttered wrathfully. Uigur was of the Turk family, with Hunnic blood in his ancestry...
Chapter 8
PARTS AND PLAYERS
But there was not time enough to view the rest of the Game history; the huge center cluster of the galaxy was upon the fleet, and Hun's descendant Uigur had to deal directly with Han's descendant T'ang. The horses had to slow way down to maneuver deviously along established channels between the myriads of stars and clusters and nebulae. These were the lowlands, with a hundred Chinese planets for every Uigur planet and population to match.
They landed at the Emperor's city-planet of Changan. Its Game-surface was a fertile riverside marsh given over to extensive rice and millet culture. Stolid, bent-over peasants worked the fields, and their junks floated in the wide river. There was hardly decent footing for a horse.
Alp felt stifled here in this unnatural congestion. But he knew that his nomad impulse to burn all the buildings and plow the fields into fallow pasture was mistaken. There was, unfortunately, much to be said in favor of civilization.
The architecture was awesome to a born Uigur. Inside the palace were elegant hangings and extremely realistic murals. Uga was less impressed than Alp, perhaps because outside the Game Uga was accustomed to the opulence of twenty-fourth century existence.
The Emperor was too busy at the moment to see them.
Every Minute of the Game was six hours historically. Four Minutes was a full twenty-four hour day. Half an Hour was about a week. The Uigur envoys had traversed a major section of the galaxy to call on this derivative of fat Han—who was now entertaining himself by making the nomads wait. Alp showed no more emotion than the others did, but he seethed.
A full Hour passed, and another commenced.
The Uigurs were vastly outnumbered here, and by protocol had no weapons inside the palace. They had to wait the Emperor's pleasure.
After a full historical month, Uga talked as privately as was possible with his lieutenants. 'It's a studied insult,' he said. 'How should we best react?'
'We must wait,' Pei-li counseled. 'We dare not return without an answer for the Khagan.'
'The only answer the Khagan wants is news of Uga's death,' Alp said. 'We know he will get no T'ang bride. Why should we tolerate this lowlander insolence? There is nothing to be lost by a little judicious violence.'
Pei-li, no coward, shook his head negatively. 'On honest open plains I would fire an arrow up the Emperor's fat posterior. Here in his home-city it would be disastrous to try it. Our corpses would not even be honored.'
Spoken like a genuine Uigur! Alp thought, liking the gruff noble better. Of course the matter of proper burial was academic; there were no literal corpses in the Game.
Still, his own time was running out. Alp had to achieve a good position within ten Days or lose his advantage and probably his life. He could not afford to sit idle far from the sources of Steppe power while that precious time expired. 'Neither of you will die on this tour,' he reminded them. 'With no legitimate mission to accomplish and no risk—'
'I do not care to gamble the fortune of my part on the word of a recruit player,' Pei-li said shortly.
Uga spoke quickly, preventing Alp's response. 'Ko-lo's counsel is tempting—but if we survived we should not know whether it was the result of Game predetermination or sheer luck. If we die, no one would care. So we shall let discretion guide us and wait.'
So they waited. After the third Hour they went out to look at the city—and discovered T'ang troops surrounding their horses and men.
