Chapter 3

On my first night, the others gave me clothes, shoes, and socks.

I went to the stream to wash my feet. Only then did I see that thick calluses had formed across my soles. The blood blisters had burst and regrown, then burst and regrown again, until they clung fast to my feet like shoes made of flesh.

I dared not wash for long and soon returned to the tent.

There were too many things I feared in those days. I could not even sleep without anxiety, terrified that someone would discover I was a woman.

After a month, I finally began to relax.

Perhaps because I had been poorly fed since childhood, my monthly courses had never begun. I already looked like a man, and once the army began feeding me properly, I shot up another half a head in a single month. I stood taller than many of the men.

No one would suspect I was a woman.

Relieved, I threw myself into training and learned to swing a spear until the shaft whistled through the air.

It seemed a decent life.

Another month passed. We crossed the Lian River by boat to pursue the retreating Prince of Zhennan.

The two armies met thirty li south of the river.

It was the first time I faced war directly.

Blood. Corpses. Screams.

Fear returned to familiar ground, trembling as it closed around my heart.

I wanted to run back, but the blades of my own side waited behind me.

I could only go forward.

My spear pierced armor and flesh. The enemy’s blood poured out and gathered like rivers.

The first man died.

He died on my spear.

After that, the second, the third, the fourth… all of it seemed to follow naturally.

I cut off their heads. The blood was still warm—scalding, as though it would sear my palms.

I was unhurt, while they were truly dead.

We had won.

Killing was so easy.

After several more battles, I was promoted to commander of a hundred men. My superior awarded me two strings of cash—exactly twice the price my life had fetched.

I wanted to send the money home, but in troubled times, crossing a river was almost the same as crossing into another life.

As I scraped rice from my bowl, I could not stop thinking of Mother, my sister, and my brother.

The twenty jin of grain must have been gone long ago.

One string of cash could not buy much.

Were people in the village still boiling other people? That sharp smell of meat. That fleshy section of lotus root hanging over the edge of the pot.

I turned aside and vomited.

Half a year later, I was promoted again for valor in battle, this time to company captain, with nearly a hundred men under my command.

The commandant thought well of me, and his favor made my whole company valued in turn.

As winter approached, the weather grew colder, but the war only ground deeper into stalemate.

Rather than collapsing as expected, the Prince of Zhennan began a counteroffensive.

One day, I was ordered to lead my men in holding a mountain pass.

The commandant promised that if I held out for two days, he would bring the main army to reinforce us.

Under cover of darkness, I led my men south.

The moon shone bright and clean.

We passed through frost-white branches frozen by winter.

Wang Ersan, beside me, was about my age—perhaps fifteen.

With a boy’s excitement, he said to me,

“Brother Jiang, once we’ve won, I’m taking all the reward silver I’ve saved home. My mother will be so happy.”

I nodded along. Everyone was immersed in a false joy, as though we would return victorious the very next day.

That joy was a bubble. Then snow like grains of salt began to fall.

I held out a hand. The flakes melted in my callused palm.

They melted between Wang Ersan’s brows, among the withered branches, and on the bloodstained point of my spear.

At first, the snow delighted us.

It felt like being home two or three years before.

Then we remembered that we were marching, and that the purpose of walking on was to kill or be killed.

The mood turned heavy in an instant. No one spoke again.