Chapter 8

Chapter 8

After that, I kept searching for the source of the singing and the whereabouts of the gelu, but the camp was tightly guarded and I found no clues.

Chen Dong did not touch me again. I served him like any menial maid. I was poor at attending others, and he was not demanding, but whenever I happened to look up, I found his appraising gaze on me.

He still suspected me. If so, why keep me at his side?

One day, I returned with water and paused outside the tent to rest, unaware that Chen Dong had already come back. I overheard him speaking with his adjutant.

“We cannot begin work on the kilns until we reach Nancheng. Before then, find out who she truly is.”

“Yes, General.”

The adjutant who had said I reminded him of his daughter ventured, “Does the general believe something is wrong with her?”

“My tent is full of things southerners prize: jewels worth half a city, antiques thousands of years old. She hasn’t touched them. She hasn’t even looked at them. Some things cannot be concealed. An ordinary merchant’s sixteen-year-old daughter could not behave that way.”

“Then if she has lied all along, she may be an assassin trained by the southern court. Why risk it, General? Kill her now.”

Chen Dong was silent for so long that my heart hammered nearly out of control.

“No,” he said.

A horn suddenly sounded – the warning of an enemy attack. The basin slipped from my hands and struck the ground. Chen Dong burst from the tent and nearly collided with me.

“Run!” he barked.

Before the word had left his mouth, a flaming arrow hissed toward us. Fire raced across the tent. His expression sharpened as he looked toward the hill where sentries should have been posted. A line of archers lay in ambush there, loosing dense volleys of flaming bolts. Another force had infiltrated the camp and was already fighting Northern Qian’s soldiers.

“Protect the general!”

Guards surged before him, roaring as they knocked arrows aside with their blades. I stared, trying to identify the attackers. Southern Xu’s regular army had collapsed on every front. Where had these people come from?

Before I could understand, Chen Dong yanked me behind him. “Why are you standing there? Get over here!”

The raiders did not appear trained and were not individually strong, yet their deployment showed remarkable strategy. Without armor, relying on savage close combat, they cut swiftly toward Chen Dong through Northern Qian’s finest troops.

Their leader was a giant of a man, tall as a bear, wielding a long saber.

“Die, northern dogs!”

Chen Dong drew his blade. “Who are you?”

With one stroke, the giant shattered a guard’s shield. “I’m a man of Southern Xu!” he laughed.

Chen Dong vaulted in front of his guards and met him blade to blade. The giant’s weapon struck Chen Dong’s gleaming saber and chipped it. Northern Qian’s warriors deserved their fearsome reputation, yet the giant yielded not an inch. After several exchanges, however, defeat became inevitable.

The raid depended entirely on speed. Flaming bolts and suicidal close combat had existed only to bring their leader within reach of Chen Dong for a killing blow. Once Northern Qian’s army recovered…

Several soldiers attacked the giant together, pierced his abdomen, and forced him down. One raised a sword to finish him, but Chen Dong shouted, “Keep him alive!”

The soldier’s eyes were red, his sword hand shaking. Countless comrades had just died, yet he obeyed and threw the weapon aside.

“Are you a bandit?” Chen Dong asked.

“I’m your grandmother!”

The giant had gone pale from blood loss but still spat, nearly hitting Chen Dong’s face.

“You fight well. Southern Xu has fallen, and the King of Northern Qian honors warriors. Why seek death?”

With his face ground into the dirt, the man threw back his head and laughed. “Fallen, my ass! As long as the people of Southern Xu live, Southern Xu will never fall!”

Chen Dong waved a hand. “Take him away. Keep him alive until I learn who sent him.”

The soldiers dragged the giant off, blood pouring from his belly. He cursed at full volume the entire way. “Northern Qian dogs! To hell with your grandmothers! Fight me one-on-one if you’ve got the guts!”

The camp, peaceful that morning, was drenched in blood. Everyone hurried about. Chen Dong led men uphill to inspect the ambush site, and no one watched me.

I stood dazed. The words I am a man of Southern Xu still thundered in my ears.

Soldiers carried a grievously wounded man past behind me. “Send this one to the gelu.”

The gelu?

I jolted awake and followed them to an ordinary-looking tent at the camp’s edge. It alone had no roof.

From the entrance, I saw a statue of the Wolf-Headed Buddha within, born of the blended beliefs of Northern Qian’s many tribes: one face a terrifying wolf, the other a merciful Buddha.

A brazier burned beneath it. Badly wounded men lay scattered across the ground, convulsing. One moaned louder than the rest.

A withered hand covered his face.

“Body dies here, soul flies to the sky. The wolf runs a thousand li and awaits the hour of return.”

A gaunt old man in black crouched beside him. The wounded soldier twitched several times and fell still. A moment later, his body visibly shrank, rapidly dissolving into a pool of liquid and several bones.
It was the sorcery of the northern legends.

“Gather the bones,” the old man ordered as he moved to the next wounded soldier.

“Yes.”

A child’s voice answered. Using long chopsticks, a small boy picked the remaining bones from the liquid and cast them into the brazier.

“Xia Wan!” I cried.

The old man spun toward me. Beneath the shadow of his black hood, his eyes were clouded white. “Who are you? How dare you watch the gelu send men on!”

Xia Wan hurriedly caught his arm. “Master, this is my elder sister. She doesn’t know Northern Qian’s customs. Please forgive her.”

“Ignorance gives her the right to spy? This is sacrilege!”

I shook with fury and stormed inside. “What customs? Is wanton slaughter your custom? Invading other people’s homes to burn, kill, and pillage? And when your own soldiers are wounded, you don’t treat them – you let them die. Is that another custom? You dare speak of gods? Every last one of you deserves the deepest hell!”

In my haste, I had shouted in the southern tongue. The old man could not understand. “What did she say? Tell me!”

“My sister is apologizing, Master,” Xia Wan said.

“No! You’re deceiving me. I’ll report this to the general!”

I switched to the northern language. “Go report us! Let the general kill us both. I would rather die than let my brother practice this vile craft!”

I waited for him to explode. Instead, as though I had struck a hidden weakness, all his bluster vanished. He muttered indistinctly. Xia Wan pleaded softly, then pushed me outside.

“Aunt Xihe, I’m fine. Master treats me well. Don’t worry.”

“Nonsense!”

My voice trembled. “No wonder I couldn’t find the infirmary. There isn’t one. Minor wounds need no treatment, and the badly wounded are sent to die. No wonder we could not defeat them. How can human beings defeat beasts?”

Xia Wan held my hand and tried to soothe me. The northern wind had split the skin of his little hands into deep cracks. I could no longer hold back my tears. “How dare they make you do this? You’re so young. You are Southern Xu’s crown prince. How dare they?”

His voice was calmer than I expected. “Aunt Xihe, northerners think differently. They believe evil spirits possess the gravely wounded and bring disaster to the camp. Sending the soul skyward early lets it return as a Northern Qian warrior. As for me – in our situation, I must be a hundred times braver than an adult if I want to live and protect you.”

The winter wind tore past us. He was so slight, yet stood calm as a reed bowed by the gale but never broken.

He had always been far more resilient and mature than I was.

Then the broken song came again.

“The heavens rage, the spirits thunder wrath;
the slaughter ends, the bodies fill the field…

Long sword at his side, Qin bow in hand;
though head is severed, his courage does not yield…”

This voice was rougher and bolder, yet thick with tears.

“Do you hear it? Someone is singing ‘Hymn to the Fallen.’ Someone truly is!” I seized Xia Wan’s arm. He nodded, scanned our surroundings, and put a finger to his lips.

“A prisoner,” he whispered. “But I don’t know where they’re held.”

I stared. Northern Qian’s pragmatism bordered on monstrous. Anyone they spent men and supplies to imprison could not be ordinary.

A soldier called from the distance, “Miss Xi? What are you doing over there?”

“You should go back, Aunt Xihe. Don’t worry about me.”

“Wait. How did you know what story I had told that day?”

“I guessed.”

“Impossible.”

He smiled. “It wasn’t difficult. People’s eyes reveal everything. You were terrified, so I knew you had lied. If you were not my aunt, you could only be my elder sister. When I cried, the general was impatient but had no desire to kill me. I thought you must have invented a useful identity – salt and iron, spices, shipping routes? Most likely a craft, something that would keep us alive longer. Metalwork, weaving, porcelain… You said I must not reveal the family business, implying a private industry that could be illegal. They had just taken Linbei, a center of porcelain production, so it had to be porcelain.”

I stared. “You truly are clever. Did you always watch people’s expressions so closely in the palace?”

He did not answer. Instead, he smiled. “It wasn’t as dangerous as you think. The way that general looked at you told me he never intended to kill you.”

The soldier reached us. “Miss Xi, no one may watch the gelu send men on. Come back with me.”

For some reason, his manner toward me had grown much more respectful.

I forced a smile, my thoughts in chaos. A thousand words crowded my throat, yet in the end I could say only, “I’m sorry.”

Xia Wan gave me an innocent smile and waved one cracked little hand. “Don’t be afraid, elder sister.”

No. I could not be afraid. Before Danchi arrived, I had to win Chen Dong’s trust.