Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The Tatar people’s iron cavalry trampled through the village while the villagers were still rejoicing over this year’s fine harvest.

I should have had a fine harvest too.

The Tatars threw me to the ground. I rolled several times before the man behind me thrust at me with a long saber. He missed.

I once had a mother, too.

I saw Butcher Liu charge out with his cleaver. A Tatar’s long saber pierced straight through him. The man’s strength was astonishing; he actually lifted Butcher Liu off the ground on the blade.

An old woman who had spread vicious rumors was split open by a single stroke right in front of me. Her blood burst forth like a magnificent flower, splashing over my head and face and soaking me through.

The villagers who had once eaten my family’s grain yet slandered my mother were slaughtered like vegetables being chopped.

I lay on the ground watching, but I felt not the slightest bit of satisfaction.

An indescribable grief swept over me. It was as if something inside my body had died alive, rotted, and hardened. I clutched my throat, unable to breathe, and vomited again and again into the thick, sticky blood.

Then I suddenly heard my father’s pleading voice.

“Our family truly has no grain. I can write a few characters. I swear I could be of use to you…”

I raised my head and saw that my father had been hacked several times and could endure no more. All his integrity had dissolved into pleading, all his learning into trembling. His lofty wish to serve his country and aid its people could not withstand kneeling and kowtowing.

He was always reciting, “Though the nation has fallen, its mountains and rivers remain; in the spring of the city, the grass and trees grow deep.”

He was always reciting, “If only this body could serve the country forever, why would I need to return alive through Yumen Pass?”

Ha… ha ha. I burst out laughing.

The two of us, father and daughter.

Hahahaha.

The Tatar barbarian urged his horse backward.

My father was overjoyed and kowtowed in thanks.

But as he rose, the Tatar suddenly hauled tight on the reins. The warhorse cried out in pain and reared, then brought one hoof down on my father’s chest, crushing it.

The Tatar laughed loudly. Then he dragged an old woman who was still gasping on the ground, tied her behind his horse, and galloped away.

This was a living hell, filled with countless demons. I was one of them.

The thunder of hooves sounded again. Wan person soldiers came rushing in, and within moments more than a dozen Tatars had become corpses beneath their blades.

The black-clad leader at their head dismounted and helped me up from the ground.

“Little one, it’s all right now.”

There was a smile on his lips and gentleness in his eyes, yet only moments ago he had struck down several Tatars with a single ferocious stroke.

His name was Du Baiyi.

He told me that a hundred thousand troops of the Tatar people had surrounded Yuncheng, and that the king of the Tatar people had been killed by the general defending the city, who had traded his life for the king’s and severed his head with one stroke. The head now hung from the city gate.

He said the Tatar people had sworn to break through Yuncheng and avenge this great hatred. They were scouring the surrounding lands for grain, and Yuncheng was in grave danger.

He said he had gathered more than three thousand scattered soldiers to reinforce Yuncheng.

I knew nothing about military affairs, but I could do arithmetic.

“Three thousand against a hundred thousand. Doesn’t that mean certain death?”

He smiled.

I asked, puzzled, “How can you still smile?”

“I smile because I’m doing what I ought to do and walking the road I ought to walk. If I don’t do it, who will? If I don’t die, who will?”

He looked up with a smile, so open and unburdened. “Fortune is no longer with Great Wan, little girl. Have you ever heard the saying that a dynasty’s mandate has run out? But I cannot let the Tatar barbarians trample my homeland so easily and slaughter my countrymen. How can the Wan people’s debt of blood and corpses be left unavenged?”

I had often heard my father recite those words: knowing something could not be done, yet doing it anyway.

I shrank back a little. “If I don’t… don’t fight the Tatars, then… am I supposed to die too?”