While initially successful, Rana’s mission is soon complicated by dissension within his own camp. Two other Tibetan clan leaders, Omu Seng Tu and the Tark remain in cautious alliance with Rana while secretly plotting his downfall. Proponents of the older shamanistic traditions of the Bon, they resist the Tibetan Imperial decree against Bon practices, directing their anger and resentment at Rana.  But Rana’s cause is bolstered by the unforeseen acquaintance and service of Tando and his guide scout Artuk.

A “Young Hawk,” Rana’s youthful appearance is deceptive, as he has a shrewd maturity about him and is an excellent judge of character. Still, he is as yet unblooded in combat as he struggles to maintain political and military control of his situation. He soon finds that his fate is curiously bound up with that of Tando and Artuk, and he is led along roads he does not foresee.

Rana is also aided by his loyal friend and advisor, Keemah, who is always at his side to counsel and protect the young general. Keemah often serves as an interpreter and mouthpiece during negotiations and encounters with other characters.

EXCERPT - From Chapter 5 - Rana

Rana Tenpai reined in his mount and raised a hand. The long columns of mailed Kun Tu foot lancers on either side of him halted, the horses of their officers dancing in the wind and dust. The raised hand reached back over his white caped shoulder and his attendant immediately handed him a slender strip of carved wood. He drew aside his chada faceguard and read the ochre characters traced into etchings on the wood. His orders were clear.

 As the chief of his corps, he rode, as always, in the vanguard of his troops, surrounded by other Khur Kan troop leaders, and a squad of elite horsemen making up his personal guard. Behind them, stretching back into the vales of the Altun Shan, marched a sinuous column of nearly two thousand men at arms. The army of Tibet was known and feared by all the peoples that bordered that strange land in the inaccessible reaches of the high mountains. For decades past, the Tibetan Empire, forged from the hard stone of the mountains and nurtured by the grassy pastures and vales of the high plateaus, had vied with the T'ang Dynasty of China for supremacy in Central Asia. There were times when each had gained the upper hand, and times of long peace and mutual friendship. This was not such a time. Rana Tenpai had been sent on a mission of great importance: to seize and hold certain lands to the north, in the name of the new Emperor of Tibet, Trisong Detsen. That accomplished, he would become an emissary to the great cities on the southern trade routes: Khotan, Yarkand, Kashgar and Ak’su.

 Descending at last to the footlands of the Altun Shan and the empty depression of the Tarim Basin, Rana’s blood was up, for he was still Kuma’r-Krah, a young hawk, seeking adventure and glory in the unknown lands of the north. The title reflected his age as much as anything else. He had seen twenty-four summers, and his face was still flushed with youth, though his eyes seemed older.

 When his people had first come to this empty land, he had been a boy of twelve, training in the riding stables of Lhasa, the capitol of the Empire of Tibet. His father was a very great man, a prince and minister in the Emperor’s Court. Great deeds were expected from the sons of great men. Rana Tenpai did not wish to disappoint.

 By the age of sixteen he had taken command of his first lance of Kun Tu infantry, and he spent long hours on the slopes of Kunlun Shan, learning the way of wind, and earth, and the tumbled lay of the land. He had scouted north many times in the years of his youth, northeast to the edge of the purple veiled Pamirs and the ragged stone outcroppings of the Karakoram Range. By the time he was ready to receive this command as his own, and become a general in the army of Tibet, he was eager to prove himself. He sat tall and strong and sure in the saddle, showing no sign of weariness after the long day’s ride.

 Now he scoured the land ahead, looking down into the vast open lands of the Tarim Basin, his gaze drawn to a flicker of orange at the base of a black smear of smoke in the distance. Curious, he thought. I have not given leave for any men to patrol north of this position. What would be burning on the footlands below? Have the Chinese spied out our advance and set their pathetic warning beacons alight already? Or is this nothing more than another band of heathen Northmen, straggling in from every quarter, to ply their trade into the heartland of China?

 He wasted little thought on the matter, being possessed by the importance of the moment he was now facing. Today the rule of our new Emperor will be proclaimed in this land, he thought. This day, I will teach the heathen to speak his name with fear. I will take all these lands north of the Altun Shan as a gift to the Emperor, in his name. But first I must set my hand on these heathen traders that have long fed the T'ang. I must plant my standards upon all the walls and towers that the T'ang still keep here as their own. How presumptuous of them! They have set a guard upon the rutted tracks of these tradesmen, and they dare interfere with my foragers who come north for tree stock. We have been gone too long, and they have forgotten us. Soon they will remember.

Taklamakan            The Land of No Return      © 2001, John A. Schettler