Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Chen Dong remained occupied with interrogating the bandits. Their attack had been swift, effective, and nearly successful because they knew Northern Qian’s defenses and the camp terrain intimately. There was a spy among the northern troops.

That threatened any commander. Chen Dong had to find the traitor before Danchi, King of Northern Qian, arrived. Threats, inducements, torture – he tried everything. Screams hung ceaselessly over the camp. The giant named Zheng Long suffered the worst torments but revealed nothing, cursing at full strength, “To hell with every northern dog’s grandmother!”

When Chen Dong returned, I had barely placed a cup of tea in his hand before it shattered with a crack.

I stared. He sat with a face dark enough to terrify, seemingly oblivious to the scalding water. His whole body trembled as if he were restraining something, two flames burning in his eyes.

“Read to me,” he ordered through clenched teeth.

“Yes, General.”

He had not slept for days and had gathered books for me to read aloud. I deliberately avoided stories of war and softly began, “The mind of the past cannot be grasped. The mind of the present cannot be grasped. The mind of the future cannot be grasped…”

With a crash, he kicked over the brazier, clutched his head, and fell.

“General!”

I dropped the book and rushed to help. His body convulsed. When he looked up, his eyes were bloodred.

I remembered the adjutant’s warning: Once, the general killed more than a dozen men in the middle of the night for no reason.

I had assumed it was simple brutality, but the past few days had shown me otherwise. This was an illness.

He flung me away and staggered toward his sword. Steel hissed from the scabbard. In the jumping candlelight, he looked like a demon of slaughter.

Crack!

One stroke split the table and smashed every vessel on it. Another tore through the hanging hide map, sending it crashing to the floor. Then he turned and saw me.

He advanced, his towering shadow slowly swallowing me. I backed away, pleading incoherently, “General, please don’t…”

His red eyes blazed. The sword came down.

I squeezed my eyes shut, but the expected agony never came. I opened them to see him staring at me, sword trembling in his hand. Then he slashed his own left arm and hurled the blade away.

Blood poured from the wound, but the pain seemed to restore some clarity.

“Get out!” he roared.

I fled on hands and knees. At the entrance, I heard a strangled groan. He was biting his own wound to remain conscious, yet still hammered his head against the bedpost in pain.

Trembling, I looked at him, gritted my teeth, and picked up the sword.

I threw it outside.

Then I ran back and held him tight. “General, don’t hurt yourself. If you need to bite something, bite me.”

He was drenched in sweat and shaking with spasms. His head rubbed against my neck, his breath that of a wild beast. Then his teeth sank into my shoulder.

The pain was so violent I thought my bones would shatter. Hot blood welled at once. I lacked even the strength to cry out. Only after a long while could I raise a hand and stroke his back.

“It doesn’t hurt, General. It doesn’t hurt.”

When I had thrown tantrums as a child, Zhiqiu had comforted me this way.

His jaw did not loosen. A muffled whimper emerged from his throat. It took me a long time to make out the word.

“Xiaoxi.”

I held him tighter. “General, Xiaoxi will share your pain.”

At last, he released me and pulled me onto the bed, gasping. Blood covered the bed and floor, his and mine.

When his senses returned, he roughly tore open my clothes and saw the bite laid bare to the bone. He frowned. “Do you know you nearly died?”

I looked up. “I chose to.”

“Why?”

“Because I… I am in love with the general.”

The candle went out. Only moonlight remained, falling unobstructed over us. After a long silence, he avoided my eyes and muttered, “Southern women…”

The next day, for once, he did not go to the prison. He had the tent cleaned and sat reading reports. An elderly physician from Southern Xu was brought in, trembling as he examined me.

“This young woman has suffered long exhaustion and was weak to begin with…”

The adjutant coughed. The physician hurriedly corrected himself. “The wound is not serious. Apply medicine and take several decoctions. Her general health is more concerning. I will write a prescription to restore it.”

Chen Dong grunted, then said, “Have him examine the prisoners too. I haven’t gotten my answers. Don’t let them die.”
“Yes, General.”

The adjutant led the physician out. A while later, he returned. “The physician says that, aside from Zheng Long, the others have only a day or two left. They are determined to die. Medicine will do no good.”

Chen Dong drew a deep breath, plainly restraining his anger. “Before they die, make them name whoever sent them.”

My hand shook over the tea.

After the adjutant left, Chen Dong irritably cast everything aside and leaned back. “The Southern Xu court is gone. What are they still fighting for?”

He seemed half to ask me, half himself.

I placed the tea on his desk. “Because they see no hope.”

“While Southern Xu remained, farmers had land and people lived in relative peace. Then Northern Qian came, seized their property, killed their families, and promised a future of slavery, beatings, and misery worse than death. In such absolute despair, they will never surrender. Their resistance will only grow fiercer. If the general wants them to yield, perhaps he should offer them a little hope.”

He studied me. After a long while, he said, “When you have children, teach them to read too.”

I stared, unsure what to say. He pulled me into his arms, thinking. Then he added, “I’ll seize all the books and give them to our children.”

The physician returned the following day. Chen Dong was absent, and the old man visibly relaxed. I drew him into conversation. “Are you from Linnan? To have been summoned here, you must be a renowned physician.”

“No, no. I am ashamed.” His mouth drooped as though he might cry. He was not ashamed of my praise. Five hundred thousand people of Southern Xu had died, while he tended their killers.

“I am from the capital,” I said gently. “In troubled times, our lives are strings beneath another’s fingers. None of us chooses freely.”

His hand jerked over the prescription, dropping ink onto the page.

He said nothing for a long time. When he finished and handed it to me, he tried to smile but trembled too badly. “You… one can see your father and brothers cherished you. I have a young daughter too. I would let these old bones be ground to dust before leaving her no road to life. What you are doing… is good. Living is good.”

His last words broke as he imagined his own daughter in my place.

I sighed. “Let me see you out.”

“No, no. I must take medicine to the prisoners, and that place…”

“I’ll help carry it. Their hands are clumsy. They may spill it.”

Perhaps because the prisoners were expected to die, security was light. The guard merely said, “What brings Miss Xi here? Delivering medicine? Let us run such errands next time.”

The prison was a crude cellar. More than a dozen men lay chained, faces filthy. Only Zheng Long retained any vigor; the rest sprawled listlessly.

The physician offered them medicine with shaking hands. They either ignored him or knocked the bowls aside. He stood helpless, near tears.

I searched the prisoners. In one corner lay a frail man in rags, flies settling on him. But for the faint rise of his chest, he might have been a corpse.

He suddenly rolled over and began singing in broken breaths.

“Though the body dies, the spirit lives divine; the steadfast soul remains a hero among ghosts…”

Some watched numbly. Others joined in a low hum.

As I had thought. A man who would sing “Hymn to the Fallen” here, choosing death over surrender, was no ordinary prisoner.

I knelt and offered him medicine. “My lord, please drink.”

He did not look at me and continued singing.

Holding back tears, I whispered, “Did you not despise men who ‘sit idle debating virtue in peace, then repay their king with one death when danger comes’? Why, then, are you so intent on dying?”

He frowned, forced his head up, and looked at me with trembling effort. Candlelight revealed me clean and whole, and him wasted almost beyond recognition.

He sprang up, only for his chains to hurl him back down. Frantically, he wiped soot from his face, trying to make himself presentable. Then he kowtowed until blood marked his brow.

“This subject, Helan Zhiyan, Pacification Commissioner of Linbei, pays homage to the princess.”

The cultivated discipline of generations of upright scholars lived in his bones. He was the eldest son of the Helan clan.

Zhiqiu’s brother, Helan Zhiyan.