by Fred Yu
It’s impossible.
They rode on in silence.
Much later when the heavens had darkened, he motioned for Du to move closer. “They’re keeping her near a lake,” Feng said.
“Lake Dragonfly?”
“The only one close enough to reach by sunrise.”
“How did you know?”
“The drunk messenger said something he shouldn’t have. He said they would keep her hands tied so it would be easy to drown her. He didn’t mean drowning in a bucket of water.”
Du sucked in his breath.
Feng continued. “The messenger knew a lot, but he also had to deliver the message himself. He was wealthier than your typical running dog. That means there aren’t many of them. They’re probably petty criminals. For sure they did not mobilize the archers. So, who are they? Why are they after this treasure?”
“Could the Venom Sect be behind all this?”
Feng shook his head. “They’re not big enough.”
“They’re not small, Feng. I heard one of their elders—named Iron Spider, I think—already killed twenty people. All of them military.”
“Our military?”
“Not ours. Soldiers from elsewhere.”
Feng ran his fingers through his horse’s mane. “We should be worrying about these soldiers from elsewhere, not a bunch of poison users. How much snake venom do you need to poison an army? There aren’t enough snakes in the world.”
Du maintained a deep frown on his face.
The haze, now lifted, revealed small clusters of clouds with glowing edges. The streets were quiet, empty. The only fully lit structure in the small town, a local inn, was a hub of blurred human voices attempting to speak over each other, their tones weaving in and out of the darkness. Perhaps the only one in a town this size, the inn displayed its guests through open windows, revealing a few customers drinking and arguing inside.
“Let’s stop here,” Du said. “I can’t go on.”
Feng pulled on his horse’s harness, realizing Du had already slowed to a walk. “We’re still many hours away from the lake.”
“We need water,” Du said, his head dropping. “The horses need water.”
Feng nodded as he pulled his horse to the flimsy door and dropped to the ground outside the inn. He threw the harness over a stake by the water troughs and did the same for Du’s horse.
The inn was plain and poorly furnished with a few square tables scattered across the main room. A couple of drunks sat by the window, and an old woman drank by herself in the corner.
Du sat down in the middle of the room and motioned for the server. “Two flasks of water for the road and a gourd of liquor for the table.”
“You want a drink?” Feng asked. “Now is not the time.”
“I can’t shake these thoughts from my head,” Du whispered. “Ding and Little Chu and Wen . . .”
The server placed a bottle in front of them. Du poured the liquor and handed it to Feng.
Feng held it to his nose. “Cheap drink.”
“We need this,” Du said.
Feng drank everything with one gulp. It was the poor quality liquor the common masses consumed. He grimaced, surprised he could still taste anything.
“What are you going to do when we get to the lake?” Du asked. “What are you going to do when we find her?”
“I don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll try to lure them away before my father’s men show up.”
“Your father’s men?”
“They must be arriving by dawn,” Feng said. “We’ll stay hidden and see how we can help.”
The front door of the inn flew open, and a fully armed group of soldiers charged in, moving in unison. They streamed through the entrance in rows of two’s, then split into single file, one line on either side of Feng and Du’s table. In barely a moment the soldiers surrounded them.
Feng observed their armor, their single-edged sabers held upright in the left hand, the steel headgear protecting the sides of their necks. They were imperial soldiers, perhaps from the capital, and by no means soldiers of the Tiger Generals.
Then, out of nowhere a strange dizziness crept up on Feng. He swayed, his vision blurry, his fingers turning numb.
Du jumped to his feet and drew his sword.
No, Feng tried to say. Don’t clash with them head-on. But his throat felt tense, sore, and he couldn’t speak.
The few guests in the inn realized what was about to happen and scrambled away. The innkeeper stepped up to complain, but a soldier shoved him aside.
Swaying, fighting to focus, Feng managed to stand and reach for his sword when Du screamed.
“No!” Feng shouted. Du collapsed face first. A soldier hacked him down with his saber.
Feng’s vision blurred. He was shaking. He couldn’t believe it. All of his friends in the same day fell to the sword of unknown enemies. With a roar Feng kicked over the square table, hurtling it into the men on his left. He then drew his sword and ran an assailant through the rib cage. He stumbled and felt nauseated. He almost lost his grip on his sword but managed to hold on. He sensed them moving in from behind—there was no time to retract his sword from the man he just killed. Left with few options, he abandoned his weapon to pick up the chair behind him. He swept the chair at his assailants when he heard more screams from Du.
Feng spun around. A couple of soldiers were hauling his friend away facedown.
Feng could barely see, losing consciousness, losing the strength to hold anything in his hand.
A sharp pain pierced his arm. Several soldiers, ready to charge him, halted in their tracks.
A long needle was buried halfway into his flesh. Someone had struck him with a projectile. His vision started to clear, and he looked in the direction the needle came from. The old woman drinking by herself in the far corner was shaking her head at him, a clear expression of disdain on her face. Feng reached over and yanked the needle out of his arm. The sudden pain seemed to jolt him, and he felt better.
“Iron Spider!” someone said under their breath.
The soldiers turned to face the new threat. “Iron Spider!” another shouted. “Venom Sect!”
The soldiers fanned out into an arc, encircling her. Two men stayed behind, one on each side of Feng, pointing their swords at his throat.
“Venom Sect,” Feng whispered under his breath. The needle must have been poisoned.
He clutched his arm and felt nothing. The old woman was dressed as a peasant, quiet and unassuming. Not quite the image of a Venom Sect elder. If she really was Iron Spider and one of her needles had struck him, he should already be dead. Something told him she didn’t want to kill him and that the needle she had fired into his arm was not poisoned.
Iron Spider lifted her chin and laughed. She gave a quick jerk of both wrists, and a wave of needles shrieked across the room. Two men fell screaming with long needles embedded in their necks, faces, and eyes. They crashed onto the floor, shaking in spasms, as thin, dark trickles of blood leaked from their wounds.
Iron Spider fired another wave of needles. The soldiers promptly dropped into a crouch to evade. One man was hit. The remaining soldiers charged.
Feng attacked the two men guarding him. He drew his knife, slashed their throats while they were distracted, and ran for the door before anyone realized he was left unattended. These soldiers were well trained, their combat skills sharper than the pike men in Feng’s own unit. If he didn’t leave right away, he would never be able to find Du, and he would never find his sister.
Feng was already out the door when he heard the old woman scream.
He stopped and turned. She was hurt. What would they do to an old, injured woman?
The Venom Sect didn’t travel across the empire when unknown soldiers were roaming the land, when elite archers were firing on civilians, only to be spectators to the chaos. They knew something. They came here with an agenda, and Feng couldn’t imagine it being an honorable one.
She screamed again. Feng squee
zed his eyes shut. He could not permit an old woman, alone, to be butchered. She did announce her presence when she fired a needle into his arm and as a result fell into this predicament. He in turn took advantage of the sudden confusion she had caused to escape.
Feng ran back into the inn. Whatever she did as an elder of a criminal sect, whatever she came to do, didn’t matter. He would throw her in prison and have her tried by the magistrate and perhaps beheaded if enough evidence could be produced against her.
But today, he couldn’t watch other criminals butcher her.
Feng stood at the doorway, surveying the situation with one sweeping glance. There were twelve men around her, all of them struggling to close in. She was retreating, trying to gain enough distance between herself and her attackers. She wielded a small dagger. A gaping wound ran down her left hip, and sweat dotted her brow.
Feng ran back out, circled the small inn, and stood next to the window behind her. He picked up a large rock and hurled it into one of the horses tied by the water troughs. The horse screamed. He threw another at the second horse, which drew another wild scream.
The horses were frantic, slamming into the wooden posts they were tied to, kicking at the water troughs, and running into each other. Feng counted three breaths—enough time for the men inside to react to the noise—and leaped inside.
The old woman smiled at him with a slight nod. Half the soldiers turned toward the front door in the direction of the noise while the other assailants stood frozen with weapons held high. A gray smoke swept across the floor. The woman covered her face with a handkerchief and motioned for him to do the same.
Feng jumped back out the window and, with one hand covering his face, reached inside to pull Iron Spider out of the inn.
Her wound was deep, and her blood gushed. His horse was too close to the front door, too close to the soldiers, and he couldn’t go back for it. Feng crouched in front of her, hoisted her onto his back, and ran. Her warm blood seeped through his clothes, down his back, and onto his thighs. There was no time to stop and bandage her wound.
He wanted to hide somewhere, buy time to set traps, entice them somehow so he could capture one or two soldiers alive and question them.
He was running out of time.
Feng raced ahead for another moment. The old woman weighed more heavily on his back, and he was no longer certain if she was alive or dead. He paused to listen to her heartbeat and noticed a slow, faint, rhythmic breath.
The soldiers weren’t giving chase. They had left the inn, but they seemed to have gone elsewhere.
Feng turned in every direction, listening for footsteps, but heard nothing. He could not believe they had stopped chasing him. If these soldiers came to kill him like they killed Du, why did they give up all of a sudden?
Then he heard it deep in the air behind him like the shrill cry of animals being butchered, the sound growing louder and closer at an alarming rate. Feng recognized what was coming. He jumped to the side of the road where an empty wheelbarrow was left outside a door, then threw Iron Spider into it and flipped it over. He slid under the overturned wheelbarrow and squeezed himself against the old woman.
Before he could exhale, the sound of arrows pounded the world outside his wooden sanctuary. The tremor of endless missiles striking the belly of the wheelbarrow reminded him of a rainy day when he was a child sitting alone in front of the general’s mansion, listening to the heavy rain beating on the tiles above. It seemed magical then, and for a moment, oblivious to the danger around him, it felt magical now.
When the lethal rain stopped, Feng crawled out from under his shield. Iron Spider lifted herself on one elbow, the calm, confident expression on her face fading. Feng thought he was staring into the face of a child.
“Incredible,” she said, almost smiling.
She was perhaps in her early sixties, her long white hair was bound by ribbon into a topknot, and her slender face with light wrinkles was wrought with age. Her complexion had turned pale, and the sting in her eyes faded. She smiled, revealing large front teeth with a wide gap between them. Feng recognized her from somewhere, but he couldn’t remember where.
There was a pool of blood underneath her. If he didn’t stop the bleeding soon, she would not make it. He lifted her in his arms, placed her into the wheelbarrow, kicked apart any arrows stuck underneath the wheels, and pushed forward.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“We need to find shelter from these arrows. But if we hide too long, the foot soldiers will catch up to us.”
“Who’s shooting at us?”
Feng pushed harder now, trying to gain enough momentum to run down the road. “I don’t know.”
Iron Spider smiled. “You have questions for me. Ask now.”
“Do you know who those soldiers are?”
“Shouldn’t you know? They came for you!”
“Of course they’re after me,” Feng said, deep in thought. The soldiers marched into the inn already in formation, and without a sideward glance they surrounded him and Du. They came prepared.
“And you already know who I am,” Iron Spider continued. “You’re going to ask me why I’m here. I don’t have any answers for you.”
“Then you’ll answer under torture.”
She laughed. “Is that a glorious thing for you, young man? To torture an old woman?”
“There are no rules against torturing the elder of a criminal cult.”
“So, you didn’t realize I saved your life.”
Feng finally found his pace behind the heavy load, running at full speed, the wheelbarrow steady in front of him. “What do you mean?” he asked between deep breaths.
“You were already poisoned, fool. I gave you the antidote through the needle.”
Feng slowed. He remembered being dizzy and nauseated the moment the soldiers came into the inn. The feelings subsided shortly after he extracted the needle from his arm.
“Who poisoned me?”
“The other boy, who pretended to be stabbed by his friends. When they hauled him away, he had a smile on his face.”
“What are you talking about?”
Iron Spider laughed again, this time her voice weaker. “You’re really not as smart as you look, are you? You didn’t notice the pill between his fingers when he poured your drink. What an amateur.”
“And why would my friend poison me?”
“If you believe that amateur poison user is really your friend.”
Feng didn’t respond. He grew up with Du, trusted him like the brother he never had. Why would he believe the words of a criminal from the Venom Sect?
Yet, what she said continued to bother him. He was dizzy after drinking the liquor, and he did recover after her needle struck him. Could it be coincidence? Or maybe there was truth in her words.
Not Du. The poor boy was slashed twice by the enemy and perhaps already dead.
All his friends were dead.
In the distance behind them, Feng heard the footsteps of many men and knew it was a matter of time before they fired again. He peered into the side roads at every intersection he passed, hoping to find a smaller paved path. It would allow him to continue running with the wheelbarrow and perhaps provide some protection from the onslaught of arrows, even if they did rain from above.
Only the main road was paved. There was nothing left to do but run. The road would extend into the fields outside the town. If he could get there before the archers caught up to him and if it ended at the edge of the forest, at least he would have trees to hide behind.
The footsteps behind him stopped, and Feng knew he was out of time. There was nowhere to hide except under the wheelbarrow again.
Feng reached into his pocket and stroked the bronze plate of the Tiger General. How long ago it seemed when he was sitting among his friends, eating large chunks of beef and drinking the best liquor the inn had to offer. Now, he was protecting an elder of the Venom Sect while imperial soldiers chased him and Zhuge Nu archer
s fired at him. How life had changed since the sun rose over the City of Stones.
He pushed past the last house on the edge of town and ventured into the open fields. He could sense it in his gut. The archers would fire into the darkness, kill without discrimination, murder any civilian who happened to be outdoors. They would continue to hunt him until they found his body.
Perhaps his father didn’t want him to come home because a Zhuge Nu army was after him, and his return would endanger the rest of the family. So, he sent his son away to die alone elsewhere. There was fire in the back of Feng’s eyes. The old general didn’t care about him enough to protect him.
The road narrowed. A short distance in front of Feng was a young girl carrying a straw basket. Far away behind him, the shrill whistle of the modified arrows emerged.
“No!” he shouted. He charged forward with such force the wheelbarrow jolted from his hands and began to overturn. He kicked the wheel to control the tumble and lunged for the farm girl, still a good distance away, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Get under the wheelbarrow!”
He grabbed her by the shoulders, dragged her small frame with all his strength, and slid under the overturned wheelbarrow. He reached around her waist and pulled her closer. He smelled the fresh scent of flowers on her neck and felt the softness of her belly, the warmth of her back against his chest. He squeezed himself and the girl against Iron Spider, reached up to pull the wheelbarrow closer to them, and waited.
The arrows pounded the world outside. In a moment it was over.
There was silence except for the steady breathing of the farm girl in his arms and the old woman’s short and uneven breaths behind his neck. Feng threw off the wheelbarrow and climbed to his feet.
She was beautiful with large blue eyes and small, full lips, her long hair strapped behind her in a ponytail. There was something about her features that was different, something unusual and foreign. Feng didn’t want to take his eyes off her, but he knew he was running out of time. He reached down to help Iron Spider.
“What’s happening here?” the girl asked. “Where did all these arrows come from?”