A divine healer, a general, a young marquis! Who can rival them!

On the night of May 21st, when the tents were closed, she helped her father back to the tent.

After the leaders of the forty-three tribes had all left, only the fire in the copper basin remained in the main tent. When her father stood up from under the banner, he pressed his hand down on her shoulder, very firmly.

"Did you hear what the guy with the broken leg said?"

She stood behind the tent all night and heard it.

The young man said something to the forty-three tribes: the people from the south sawed off his leg, but dragged him back from the hands of their own witch doctor.

"I heard you."

The father took a few steps outside the tent, then suddenly stopped.

Help me up.

That was May 21st.

He didn't get up the next morning.

At first, he said it was a backache. He'd spent his whole life on horseback, so backaches weren't unusual for him. On the third day, there was blood in his urine, and it was dark in color. A shaman came to check and said it was from riding too much, causing heat in his blood that was flowing downwards, and that three days of cooling medicine would cure him.

He drank the cold medicine and then vomited.

By early June, her urine output decreased day by day. She measured it again with a wooden bowl: three bowls on May 28th, one and a half bowls on June 3rd, and only a small half bowl on the 8th. After the 10th, there was no urine output at all.

He pressed down on the top of his foot, leaving a dent that lingered for a long time. His eyelids were swollen by morning. He drank far more water than he expelled, and he didn't know where the extra water went.

His stomach swelled up, swelling like a drum. He couldn't lie down, so he could only sit half-upright, leaning against the cushion, his hands gripping the edge of the felt.

A 59-year-old man can break out in a sweat from the pain in one night.

That's how her grandfather passed away. Her eldest uncle also passed away in the same way; at the age of forty-nine, his stomach was swollen for nineteen days. The elders in the clan say that all the men in this family who reach a certain age must go through this ordeal.

The witch doctor used four methods.

The first thing was to force-feed him the medicine. He prepared the medicine himself; it was black, and he had to drink two bowls a day. He would vomit within half an hour of being forced down his throat, and each time he vomited more and more.

The second method is burning moxa. It is burned on the lower abdomen until seven blisters appear.

The third method is to apply hot ash. The ash is taken from the brazier, wrapped in a cloth, and pressed onto the abdomen until the ash on the cloth cools down completely.

The fourth item is a whip.

That day, the shaman said that the Khan's illness was caused by an evil spirit entering his body, and that the evil spirit needed to be expelled. He ordered two people to lift his father's upper body up, and then took a thin whip and lashed him thirty times through a layer of cloth.

When he was struck seventeenth time, his father fainted.

She rushed forward and grabbed the whip.

"You attacked the Khan."

"I'm exorcising evil," the witch doctor said. "If the princess tries to stop me, it's because she wants to keep the evil inside."

The heads of the forty-three departments came seven times, but never once entered the tent.

It was her brother who stopped them.

He deployed two hundred cavalry to guard the outer perimeter of the royal court, ostensibly to guard against spies from the south. He forbade anyone to enter or leave, and forbade any news from spreading out. He accepted everything the chieftains sent, and then sent the people back after receiving it.

One day she bumped into him outside the tent. He had just come out of his father's tent, his face and clothes were clean.

"My sister is well taken care of," he said.

She did not answer.

From the second day onwards, two more people entered the tent. They were sent by her brother, supposedly to attend to the Khan at night, staying by his side day and night. While she wiped her father's mouth, turned him over, and changed his bedding, the two men stood three steps away watching.

From that day on, she could only carve pillars when they were dozing off.

That night, she discovered that her father's white horse had been taken away and tied up behind her brother's tent.

The horse is alive, and the man is not dead.

Starting on May 22nd, she began carving a message on the pillar inside her father's tent.

She carved one piece a day, using her own small knife, on the shaded side of the pillar. When she reached the tenth piece, she started carving a small pit next to it, a pit she had spit out several times.

She also discovered something else.

The witch doctor's medicine always made him vomit. On the two days he didn't drink it, my father was able to swallow half a bowl of milk.

She tried three times. All three times were the same.

When the witch doctor came for the fourth time, she took the bowl of black medicine and said she would feed him herself. After the witch doctor left, she poured the medicine onto the grass behind the tent.

My father slept for two hours that night.

The next day, the witch doctor said that the medicine was effective and the Khan was feeling better.

She knelt inside the tent without saying a word.

She simply added an extra line to the mark on the pillar for that day, making it deeper, so she could remember that it was a day she hadn't taken the medicine.

On the ninth day of the sixth lunar month, she went to see that person.

That man was her father's cousin, in his forties, who had been in charge of the affairs of forty-three tribes since last winter. In April, he went to the southern camp twice, and upon returning, he recounted everything he had seen in the main tent. After he finished speaking, the Khan told everyone in the tent that the southerner was eager for them to count all the horses in the camp.

When she found him, he was shoeing his horse.

"I want you to go south."

The man stopped.

"Princess, the Khan's decree of May 21st is that anyone who receives another letter from the south must move their entire tribe 500 li north."

"That was Father Khan's order."

"Exactly."

"My father can't urinate now, his stomach is swollen like a drum, and he's in pain three times a night," she said. "The person who issued this order can't change it now."

The man put the hammer down.

"Does the princess know what will happen to me if I go and return?"

"I know."

"The princess knows my fate," the man said. "When I leave, my entire tribe of over three hundred people will have to move five hundred li with me. In the winter, the snow in that area can reach up to a horse's belly."

"Then why are you still standing here listening to me?"

The man switched the hammer to his left hand.

"What if that man from the south doesn't come?"

"He will come."

Why?

"Because he even took in the remaining 147 people after the burning," she said. "He'll come and see what kind of person this is who ordered the burning of 417 people."

That person stood there for a long time.

"What can the princess offer to convince him?"

The curtain was lifted.

The young man with the broken leg came in. He was using a wooden crutch and had come from his own unit, a journey that took him two days.

"I'll go," he said.

"Your leg."

"It's because of this leg," the young man said. "I've been to that camp before, and I know the way from the main gate to the wounded soldiers' tent. Their general held me down. When he saw me, he knew where I came from without anyone saying a word."

The man looked up, glanced at him, and then looked at the princess.

"When are you leaving?"

"Tonight."

"Which road should we take?"

"Go around to the west," the man said. "My brother's cavalry can block us from the east. Going around to the west is forty li more, but there's no one there during the day."

On June 11, the two of them went around to the west.

She stopped them at the second slope outside the royal court. The young man with the broken leg was tied to the horse by her own hands, with three ropes tied in place.

"What if my father can't hold on?" she asked the man before leaving.

"Then I've made a wasted trip."

"What if my brother makes the first move?"

This time, the person did not answer her.

Back in her tent, the first thing she did was count the marks on the pillars.

From May 22nd to June 11th, 20 courses.

She counted the small pits next to her again; there were sixty-nine.

She straightened the crooked pole outside her father's tent and placed three stones under its base.

That night she led her horse out of the herd, tied it behind the tent, added plenty of hay, and didn't remove the saddle.