Empire of Dragons

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Dan Qing was deeply stricken by those words. He murmured, ‘Wei, you must be Wei . . . It’s not possible . . .’

  ‘It is I. And I am here to take my revenge.’

  METELLUS, BALBUS and the others passed under the archway of the northern tower, an imposing structure of carved, painted wood, following the monk who was accompanying them towards a large oak door.

  Something fell from above on to the head of Rufus, who was the last in line. ‘Blasted birds!’ he swore, raising his hand to wipe it away. He was shocked to see a red stain and showed it to his commander. ‘It’s . . . blood!’

  An image flashed into Metellus’s mind: the rigid, immobile figure of Master Wangzi on the top of the tower, the one directly above them. He lifted his eyes towards the ceiling and saw blood dripping through the planks.

  ‘Your weapons, men!’ he said instantly. ‘Return to the prince!’

  A sword materialized in the hand of their escort and cut through the air like lightning. It would have neatly decapitated Metellus had he not been forewarned and dodged it just in time. Antoninus had already pulled a knife from his belt; he threw it with deadly precision and it sank into the monk’s forehead. He folded to the ground without a cry.

  ‘Back to the prince, quickly!’ shouted Metellus, and he lunged with his sword in hand towards the visitors’ quarters, followed by his men. He kicked open the door and rushed inside, shouting, ‘Prince! It’s a trap! Beware!’ but he drew up short at the sight of Dan Qing, immobilized by armed men.

  The man who had received them at the door was obviously their leader. He motioned to one of them, who brought a sharp blade to the prisoner’s throat. ‘Drop your weapons or I’ll have him slice it open,’ said the young man, and his gaze was no less cutting than the knife pressing on the prince’s skin.

  Metellus tossed down his gladius and so did the men who had entered with him.

  ‘Your servants are quite perspicacious,’ said Wei sarcastically. ‘I wonder how they could have imagined what was happening here.’

  ‘As we were passing below the northern tower,’ said Metellus to the prince, ‘a drop of blood fell from above. What’s on the tower is the corpse of your master.’

  Dan Qing howled in despair, struggling to get free, but his captors forcefully twisted his hands behind his back, forcing him to his knees.

  ‘I had no choice,’ said Wei impassively. ‘That crazy old man refused to listen to reason and was about to react in an ill-advised manner. You well know that he can be quite dangerous, despite his age. Only a sword is harder than those bony hands of his.’

  ‘You rabid dog!’ shouted Dan Qing. ‘Curse you! You will pay for this infamy!’

  ‘More than I’ve already paid?’ replied Wei. ‘Don’t you think you’re exaggerating a bit, My Prince? Do you have any idea what castration means to a boy of sixteen? Do you have any idea of the atrocious pain, of the horror, of the agony that seized me that day?’

  Metellus stared in bewilderment at Dan Qing, who would not meet his eye.

  ‘It was only the desire for revenge that kept me alive,’ continued Wei. ‘And now I shall have what I have so long desired. I’ve taken your kingdom, and I’ll help myself to everything else before I condemn you to eternal desperation. You cannot imagine how eagerly I have awaited this moment.’ He turned to his men. ‘Take them away.’ As they were carrying out his order, he added, ‘Their weapons as well. There are more of them hidden under their horses’ saddlecloths.’

  Metellus and the others followed the men, who led them to the middle of the courtyard and chained them to the hay crib. Dan Qing was conducted inside the monastery. As he was being dragged over the threshold, the prince turned towards Wei and asked, ‘Where’s Yun Shan?’

  Wei replied with a smirk, ‘She’s here. And she will soon be in my hands. Who knows, maybe she still loves me. What do you say?’

  ‘Leave her in peace!’ replied Dan Qing. ‘She has nothing to do with this. It’s between me and you!’

  Wei looked hard at him, his eyes full of hatred and anguish. ‘Yun Shan has everything to do with this, Prince. It was because of her that you had the most cruel humiliation inflicted upon me.’ Although he spoke from the bottom of his throat, his adolescent’s voice was shrill, in a disturbing contrast with the virile fury of his gaze.

  Wei’s features were extraordinarily beautiful. His skin had the smooth transparency of wax, his slightly pronounced jaw gave him a wilful, unsparing expression. His neck was straight and muscular, his shoulders wide, his waist narrow, his legs long, his fingers as slim and tapered as those of a girl, but as steely as tiger’s claws. Dan Qing felt his heart sink as they dragged him away.

  WEI WAS PACING back and forth in the large empty room, alone. Then he leaned his elbow against the wall and his brow against his hand, standing perfectly still.

  He jumped at the voice of one of his men: a tall, lean Manchurian with eyes as narrow as slits. ‘My Lord, we have searched everywhere, but we have not found her.’

  ‘That’s simply not possible!’ shouted Wei. ‘You haven’t looked hard enough. Find her, do you understand that? Find her, if you want to keep your head. I know she’s here! I’m certain of it!’

  The Manchurian made no visible reaction: his grey stone face remained impassive as he bowed and left the room. He was soon heading back underground to order his men to continue the search. He descended a spiral staircase which led to a vast subterranean chamber, stepping over the bodies of the monks who had given their attackers a tough fight. They were scattered along the stairs and the black streams of their clotted blood stained the grey stone. He found himself before a bronze door opening on to a large room illuminated by bronze lamps. A colonnade of dark stone lined the walls. On one of the short sides, two bronze dragons flanked a stair that led to a large statue of Buddha in meditation. An enormous tripod of finely embossed bronze was full of lustral waters on which purple lotus flowers floated. Five armed men were striding out.

  ‘Where are you going?’ the Manchurian demanded. ‘Our lord said we are to keep looking.’

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ replied the patrol leader. ‘We’ve scoured the place.’

  ‘There may be secret hiding places,’ replied the Manchurian. ‘Continue your search. I’ll go to the eastern wing to check on the rooms there. We’re not leaving until we find that cursed viper.’

  The five men turned back and began to inspect the floors and walls, the part of the sanctuary behind the statue and then the statue itself. They tapped their spear shafts against every stone slab, every inch of the wall, the bases and shafts of the columns.

  ‘It’s no use,’ said the patrol leader in the end. ‘There’s nothing here. Even if we stay here all day we won’t find a thing. Let’s go.’ He lifted his torch high one last time to inspect the ceiling beams, then shook his head and went out of the door. His men followed him one by one.

  At that same moment, a slim figure dressed in black leaned out from behind one of the big joists, slipped over to one of the columns and dropped down along its polished shaft, touching the ground instantly without making a sound. She caught up with the last soldier before he crossed the doorway and cut his throat with a razor-sharp dagger, accompanying his lifeless body to the floor with her other arm, with the same grace and ease as if she were laying a baby in its cradle. She swiftly put on his tunic and boots and pulled his helmet over her head, lowering the mask-like sallet over her face. She grabbed his bow and quiver and went up the stairs to join Wei’s men, but a hand encircled her ankle, immobilizing her.

  ‘Yun Shan . . .’

  The girl bent over a dying monk. ‘Bao Deng! My poor friend . . .’

  ‘Flee this place, save yourself. Find the men of the Red Lotus. Only they can protect you.’

  ‘They don’t know me . . . I’ve never met them. The master wanted to put me in contact with them but it’s too late now.’

  ‘Go to the capital . . . the tavern of the Green Dragon. Give the owner
this pendant I wear at my neck . . . Take it.’ He collapsed with a slight gasp.

  Yun Shan dried a tear and slipped the leather lace from the monk’s neck; hanging from it was a silver pendant with a red enamelled lotus blossom at its centre. She closed his eyes and then, with a few agile leaps, caught up with the end of the small column that was heading up the stairs.

  The Manchurian officer who had just arrived from the eastern quarters could see in his men’s eyes that they’d had no success and he went straight to Wei to report on the negative outcome of his mission. ‘We looked everywhere, My Lord. We even checked the corpses one by one to make sure that she hadn’t accidentally been killed in the fray. Nothing. She is nowhere to be found. Either your information was not correct or she managed to escape in the initial confusion after we broke into the monastery.’

  ‘That is not possible, Commander Zhou. I trust my sources and what I tell you is always correct. Remember that, unless you want to face unpleasant consequences.’ He left the room, went to the centre of the courtyard and for a few moments stood watching the ten Western barbarians chained to the feed crib with ill-concealed curiosity. A short distance away his men were passing around the barbarians’ weapons with great interest.

  The sky over the monastery began to darken, as a strong north wind picked up, carrying rain-laden black clouds with it. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  Wei turned to the Manchurian commander. ‘Have all the villages in the vicinity searched. Post guards at all the roads and trails, bridges and fords. I want that girl at any cost.’ He turned back to consider Metellus and the others. ‘Tie them to their horses. We’ll take them with us.’

  One of the guards unchained them, while others brought their horses and forced the prisoners to mount them, tying their hands to the saddle pommels.

  Dan Qing underwent the same treatment, as the rest of Wei’s men were gathering in every corner of the monastery courtyard. Some of them, the prince thought, were surely members of the Flying Foxes, like those who had ambushed them towards the end of their long journey. He recognized those formidable combatants by their light bearing, the intensity of their gaze, and by the way they kept their hands on the hilts of their swords. Metellus passed without even acknowledging him and Dan Qing felt humiliated.

  ‘You have no right to judge me,’ he said. ‘You know nothing.’

  ‘I think I know enough,’ replied Metellus. ‘What I heard is enough for me. What you did is atrocious and incomprehensible. Not even the maddest of our emperors would have done such a thing.’

  The column prepared to start off, with Wei at its head on a black charger. Dan Qing’s and Metellus’s horses were tethered behind the last chariot, followed by those of the other Romans.

  The clouds had clustered into enormous black thunderheads fringed with grey, flashes darting through them like snakes of fire. The dull roar of the oncoming storm reverberated into a thousand echoes on the rocky sides of the valley. Rain began to fall.

  Dan Qing watched as Wei dismounted his horse and entered the first carriage and then answered Metellus: ‘The solidity of our state depends on exemplary punishment.’

  ‘That is not punishment. It’s savage cruelty that nothing can justify. What had that boy done to deserve such horror?’

  One of the Manchurian horsemen from Wei’s escort passed alongside Metellus and stared into his eyes for a moment with particular intensity. A gaze that reminded him of Dan Qing’s, when he had seen him for the first time outside the walls of Edessa. He forced himself to look away and to listen to what the prince was saying.

  ‘I did not give the order.’

  ‘Oh no? And who did, then?’

  Dan Qing felt humiliated at the idea of having to provide explanations to a subordinate, something he’d never done in his whole life. But he could not help himself from continuing: ‘Wei was trying to seduce my sister, Princess Yun Shan, but I never even met him. My father learned about it from one of his ministers. He was told that the youth was very ambitious and wanted to use his charm to bind the princess to him and enter thus into the royal family. It was rumoured that someone was using him to infiltrate new blood into our noble lineage.’

  ‘Two adolescents in love . . . Good gods, he had only fallen in love with your sister! That doesn’t seem such a serious crime to me. It happens every day where I come from and no one is surprised by it.’ The end of the column had begun to move, and Metellus turned around to encourage the others. ‘Take heart, men! After what we’ve been through, this certainly shouldn’t worry us. The journey will be lengthy and anything may happen. The prince’s Chinese troops will come to our aid.’

  Dan Qing interpreted that interruption as another intentional sign of scorn, but he had agreed to accept a different relationship with the Roman he’d called Xiong Ying, and he realized that his attitude was meant to put him to the test, to examine his motives before deciding whether to carry on with their friendship. It was a trial he had to submit to and he continued as if nothing had happened: ‘Yun Shan was promised by my father to a prince of the state of Wu, a kingdom which had broken away from the empire. It was a way for him to reunite the state without bloodshed. He told the minister to dissuade Wei from his intent, but to no avail. The minister felt that an exemplary punishment was necessary so that nothing of the sort might happen again, so that in the future no one would ever think of attempting such a thing.’

  ‘And he had him castrated.’

  Dan Qing nodded.

  ‘Contemptible,’ said Metellus without even looking into his eyes.

  ‘I did not give that order.’

  ‘That doesn’t change things. He who holds power is responsible for what his subordinates do. Even in the fury of battle, even under the most precarious circumstances, my men know that they must respect the rules that their commander upholds. In any case, I am responsible for every action of theirs, no matter how contrary it may be to my principles. This is what we call disciplina.’

  Dan Qing fell silent. Only the snorting of the horses and the rumbling of the thunder could be heard in the mist-covered valley.

  24

  ‘SHE’S ALIVE.’

  Dan Qing turned towards Metellus. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Your sister is alive.’

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘I can still tell a woman’s gaze when I see it. A woman disguised as a Manchurian soldier . . . who else could that be?’

  ‘You’re probably right. Where did you see her? Where did she go?’

  ‘I don’t know. She looked at me for a moment, then rode off. She might still be here, or she may have gone off into the forest.’

  The wind was blowing up even more strongly, with furious gusts, until the clouds split and the rain hammered down in a violent downpour, flooding the ground at their feet and transforming the trail into a muddy stream. The Romans bent their backs under the lashing storm, accustomed to bearing up silently under adversity, under the hostility of men, nature and the elements. Every now and then Metellus would turn to check on them, and it broke his heart. He had convinced them to follow him on this adventure, which had just concluded in reimprisonment perhaps no less cruel than the one they had escaped from.

  He feared that destiny, this time, would not be giving them a second chance. He had not exploited their new-found liberty as he should have, and he tormented himself by thinking of thousands of ways of escaping. When he stole a glance at Dan Qing, he could feel his fury and humiliation, his frustration and impotence, but what came across most strongly was his need to talk, his need to share the anguish that oppressed him.

  ‘Who do you think betrayed you?’ Metellus asked, eyes pointed straight ahead.

  ‘I don’t know. It could have been anyone. So many people saw me in the village. Perhaps not all of them are loyal to me.’

  ‘But the attack of the Flying Foxes came from the same men who are holding us prisoner now, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘That’s possible.
’

  ‘And so your enemy already knew when we crossed the border . . . Daruma?’

  ‘Impossible,’ exclaimed Dan Qing. ‘Why would he have freed me, facing constant danger to bring me back to my homeland? My master trusted him, and no one knew a man like my master did.’

  ‘Your master is dead, unfortunately . . .’

  ‘By now the storm will have washed away his blood. Those black clots have dissolved in the water flowing over the bastions and down the stone steps . . . The man who killed him must die.’

  ‘You seek revenge for a vengeance. That’s absurd.’

  ‘I was not responsible for his misfortune. Don’t make me repeat it again.’

  ‘That doesn’t change anything. Nothing can heal Wei’s wound. He has become a war machine, a concentration of hatred and resentment that can find relief only in the grief and pain of others; in his determination to inflict more suffering than what he has been made to bear.’

  ‘From what you’ve told me, you evidently feel the same way . . . towards the man who killed your wife and took your child. Am I wrong, Xiong Ying?’ Metellus did not answer, and Dan Qing brought his argument to its conclusion: ‘That’s why I have to kill him. For one reason or another, Wei is no longer a human being: he’s a ferocious beast, a rabid dog. He must be eliminated.’

  The storm seemed to be abating after the enormous violence of its onset. The clouds galloped off towards the plain, leaving frayed traces of their passage. A dense mist invaded the valley and the rain continued to fall in occasional downpours. The column was now making its way through a vast clearing covered by a luxuriant blanket of grass.

  ‘Is there any hope for us?’ asked Metellus.