Empire of Dragons

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  Yun Shan strained to hear.

  ‘Horsemen and foot soldiers . . . a great many of them . . . thousands and thousands.’

  The wind carried a barely perceptible buzz that faded when the breeze diminished in intensity.

  ‘You have the ears of a fox.’

  ‘I told you that I spent long hours as a border guard. I saw many of my comrades fall because they hadn’t heard the enemy crawling through the dark with a dagger between his teeth. Look now,’ he said, pointing to the horizon.

  It was swarming with lights. Thousands of flames quivering in the dark, swaying as if moved by the same gusts of wind that blew through the silent alleyways of Li Cheng. The front was narrow, but then slowly broadened into an ever wider line, until the entire expanse of the high plains was covered by trembling lights.

  The men came into sight as dawn crept over the sky; rare stars pierced the cobalt dome with a light as pure as a diamond’s. Then the sun sent a blade of light between the hilltops and a thin strip of clouds.

  Wei’s army was revealed.

  There were foot soldiers advancing with long yellow drapes tied to the shafts of their pikes, warriors from the steppe wearing leather helmets with long horsehair crests, Manchurian horsemen with bronze breastplates and spears decorated with onager tufts. The imperial cavalry carried long banners of red silk on which the golden monogram of the Han dynasty was still embroidered; they wore breastplates of leather and bronze and helmets of the same shining metal.

  At the centre was the black heart of the army: the Flying Foxes. Black they were, on black horses, arousing fear even at this distance.

  Metellus heard a beating of wings over his head. He saw a dove fly over the rooftops and alight on one of the windows of the monastery, the quarters of Dan Qing.

  ‘How strange,’ he said. ‘Did you see that? Your brother’s dove is back. Doves may fly back to their homes after they’ve been deliberately transported far away, but I’ve never heard of the opposite. Go tell your brother what’s happening. I’ll stay here.’

  Yun Shan ran to the monastery and was soon back with Dan Qing, armed with a bow, bludgeon and sword.

  Dan Qing let his gaze sweep over the army that was now drawn up in full battle formation, stock still on the plain. Only the standards fluttered in the morning breeze, shot through with shivers of light.

  ‘What are they waiting for?’ asked Metellus.

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps for someone to open the gate.’

  ‘Come now. Here? That’s hardly possible,’ objected Metellus.

  ‘It wasn’t possible for an army to get this far either. It’s never happened.’

  ‘Someone has betrayed us,’ said Yun Shan.

  ‘Have you had any further news of Baj Renjie?’ asked Metellus.

  ‘He took part in my breakout, but he never showed up at the meeting point afterwards. I fear he was captured. He’s probably dead.’

  ‘Does he know how to get here?’ asked Metellus.

  Behind them they could hear their soldiers rushing to the bastions to prepare to defend the citadel. The machines creaked noisily as they were put in position and freed of their heavy canvas covers, revealing huge firing arms, powerful scorpions with multiple bows.

  ‘No,’ replied Dan Qing. ‘No one but the members of the Red Lotus knows where this fortress is located. And no member of the Red Lotus has ever betrayed it.’

  ‘What if the traitor were your dove?’ Metellus asked again. Yun Shan looked puzzled. ‘That cage had a kind of mechanism that released its occupant after a certain number of cycles. There must have been a reason for that . . . Where did you get that cage, Yun Shan?’

  ‘As I told Dan Qing, Daruma gave it to me. It was his gift for the prince.’

  ‘Daruma . . .’ muttered Metellus. ‘Daruma . . . is that possible?’

  ‘It was Daruma who organized my escape,’ said Dan Qing. ‘Why would he ever . . .’

  ‘Look out!’ shouted a voice. ‘They’re advancing!’

  A unit of enemy archers was running towards the walls. They drew up at the bottom of the ramp and took position.

  ‘Take cover!’ shouted Metellus.

  A cloud of arrows shot upwards, described a wide parabola and landed inside the circle of walls. One of the warriors who had not found shelter collapsed to the ground, run through by a number of arrows, as did all the domestic animals wandering through the square: three dogs and a trained monkey.

  Metellus turned to Dan Qing. ‘No one assaults a fortress with archers. They want to keep us busy on this side, so they can attack from another. Watch out!’ he shouted. ‘Over there!’

  A second barrage of darts rained down on the rooftops, the towers and the sentry walk on the walls.

  There was silence, several interminable moments of deep silence.

  Then a whistle pierced the sky.

  34

  ‘FLYING FOXES!’ someone screamed. ‘Alarm, sound the alarm!’

  Metellus raised his eyes to the sky and saw, in utter astonishment, what he had never been able to see clearly in the past: a swarm of flying men, hanging from huge wings of silk, gliding on the wind, skimming the treetops.

  ‘Archers!’ shouted Dan Qing. ‘Loose!’

  The archers turned their sights away from the advancing troops and trained their bows upwards without striking their targets, who were moving quickly and still too far away. A second volley took off, but many arrows were intercepted by the tree branches and fell to the ground without causing harm. Two of the soaring raiders were hit and fell headlong to the ground. Several more were injured, but the rest landed safely in great numbers and immediately engaged in furious battle with the monks who surged around them.

  Metellus could see the army charging the walls from outside and had his men load the machines. He had put together a formidable array of field artillery: catapults with several arms, multiple-bowed scorpions that hurled steel bolts, ballistae that flung jugs of flaming pitch to which Metellus had added the mysterious concoction prepared by the monks, one of their most jealously guarded secrets.

  ‘Fire!’ he shouted. ‘Now!’

  The various ballistae shot, at brief intervals, four heavy boulders each, opening frightening voids in the ranks of the Manchurian cavalry. The bolts came next and then the jars of burning pitch. They flew like flaming meteors over the wall and then, to Metellus’s utter amazement, exploded in mid-air with an earth-shaking boom, scattering a rain of fire on the troops below. Many tried to run off, but the Flying Foxes, positioned at the wings, stopped them cold with the deadly aim of their bows: the punishment reserved for cowards. Wei’s voice could be heard, as shrill as a falcon’s cry. The troops reunited in a compact front and charged forward again in attack, shouting and shooting volleys of thousands of arrows against the besieged citadel and against the war-machine posts. Many of those who manned the machines on the bastions were hit and put out of action.

  Those who survived remained at their posts and fired again in quick succession: first, second, third, fourth station. Their bolts shrieked through the air and mowed down the enemy archers and foot soldiers in great numbers. Other meteors streaked across the sky, strewing globes of fire that exploded on the ground, this time in the middle of the infantrymen, slaughtering tens of them with each blast. Wei rode furiously on towards the fortress as if nothing could stop him, as if the arrows were deflected by the fierce aura that surrounded him. He was yelling with his strident, penetrating, inhuman voice and no one dared any longer to retreat. The enemy continued to advance under the hail of missiles, racing up the access ramp to the southern gate. Behind him Metellus could hear the shouts of the combatants and the raging of the battle. He imagined that Yun Shan had joined the fight, no longer seeing her at his side, and he was tormented with anguish, but he held his position and went on coordinating the relentless firing of his machines.

  Wei, from outside, realized that his men would never reach the gate as long as those machines remained in position a
nd he ordered his archers to let fly with barrages of incendiary arrows. The darts stuck into the wood of the machines’ mobile frames and set them on fire. Many of the artillerymen were forced to leave their posts to attempt to put out the flames.

  A second and third wave of Flying Foxes descended inside the citadel, coming to the aid of their encircled comrades and reversing their odds. Dan Qing and Yun Shan, flanked by their best combatants, counterattacked vigorously, hurling themselves into the fray. From his vantage point on the battlements, Metellus could see that the Flying Foxes were trying to open the gate from the inside. He ordered several of his archers to aim in that direction and to bring down as many as they could. Several were hit and fell, but many others amazingly dodged the arrows and continued to advance, spinning their swords with remarkable rapidity and making dizzying leaps. They seemed to be animated by inextinguishable ardour, coordinated by a single mind. Metellus had already seen this approach in the great courtyard of Luoyang and he was flooded by panic. His brow dripped with cold sweat. Now a large group of assailants was racing up the stairs towards the battlements, spreading themselves around the entire perimeter. Metellus and his men met them, the Roman brandishing his two gladii and plunging furiously into the battle.

  He had never been able to test his new combat skills on the battlefield and he realized that the incredibly fast hail of blows, the glint of steel narrowly missing his face, his head, his heart, produced a delirious excitement he had never felt before, not even at the peak of the fiercest battle. He was concentrating so intensely on his adversaries’ movements that he could deconstruct them in time and space and understand the direction they were coming from as if they were three times slower than in reality. The two gladii flashed and struck with massive power, they intersected high and low, parrying, deflecting, stabbing, whacking, slashing.

  In the eye of the storm, each combatant sought a single adversary, and the battle fragmented into myriad individual fights, with a victor and a victim at every instant. Metellus shouted out at the top of his voice, ‘Yun Shan! Yun Shan, where are you?’ and knocked his adversaries back down the stairs, making them fall in clusters. He himself seemed an unstoppable war machine. A sword sliced into the flesh of his right shoulder, another grazed his left thigh, but he kept advancing, indifferent to the pain. A fresh wave of Flying Foxes swooped down very close to the gate and, before the Red Lotus combatants had time to react, managed to open it.

  Wei and his men stormed through the gate but Metellus, from the battlements, ordered the artillery to wheel their machines around and aim them inside. The invaders were greeted by relentless volleys of steel bolts, boulders and balls of flaming pitch pouring down upon them, spreading death and destruction. But Wei was their soul: black on his dark steed, he drove on without pause, dragging the others behind him. They seemed possessed, trampling on their own fallen in their fury to advance. Waves of assailants came spilling through the open gate now, like a river breaking its banks.

  Watching this happen from above, Metellus understood that the situation was hopeless. He shouted to his men, ‘Resist at any cost. Cover me from behind!’ and ran along the battlements in the direction of the staircase leading to the mausoleum of Emperor Yuandi. He suddenly vanished as if the earth had swallowed him up.

  In the big courtyard, Wei’s warriors had fallen upon the monks of the Red Lotus, led by Dan Qing and Yun Shan, who fought on with desperate valour. Wei had dismounted and was doing battle with his sword in his hand, cutting down anyone who tried to get in his way as he neared the centre of the enemy ranks. He had spotted Yun Shan and it seemed that nothing could stop him.

  But when it appeared that all was lost for the Red Lotus, a thunderous clap of bronze resounded through the courtyard, reverberating again and again. An explosion flared on the vast terrace of the mausoleum up high behind them, then another and a third. Many of the warriors turned to look in bewilderment as they heard the mighty roll of a drum beating out an invisible step.

  More explosions, and a thick curtain of smoke spread along the entire façade of the mausoleum, slowly wafting down the stairs as well. The drum roll was loud, pounding, and as the cloud began to thin a spectral vision was revealed: one hundred and fifty clay warriors decked out in Roman armour were descending those stairs in step, shoulder to shoulder, shield to shield, an impenetrable wall of iron. Marching at their head was Marcus Metellus Aquila: Xiong Ying, the Resplendent Eagle!

  A voice seemed to thunder from the bowels of the earth: ‘The Mercenary Devils have risen from their tombs!’

  Panic spread among Wei’s troops, who began to pull back in a disorderly manner. The army of spectres suddenly seemed to have stopped. Another clap of bronze thunder was heard and a barrage of darts was loosed from the wall of ghost shields, falling like hail on the rows of Wei’s men and decimating them. The army advanced again, loosing a second barrage and then a third, opening huge gaps in the enemy ranks.

  Dan Qing shouted, ‘The Mercenary Devils have returned from the tomb to save us! The prophecy has come true! Forward, men! Victory is ours!’

  At that sight and upon hearing those words, the warrior monks felt their waning strength surge up and they charged Wei’s baffled, disoriented troops, pushing them back towards the lower ground.

  The din of the drum was deafening and the vision of those ghosts of clay advancing with the jerky movements of automata struck terror into the men, and even the Flying Foxes seemed to no longer heed the cries of Wei goading them on.

  Another frightful noise was heard, as if the earth were heaving, then another roar and a curtain of smoke. One hundred more warriors, moving iron-clad statues, emerged from the other world and began to march forward, their weapons levelled, towards the undefended right flank of Wei’s army.

  One of the enemies yelled, ‘They’re the Mercenary Devils! They’ll drag us under the ground!’

  Wei lopped off his head with a single blow of his sword, but the terrorized Manchurian troops were already fleeing out of the still-open gate, followed by a great number of foot soldiers routed by Metellus’s spectral army.

  A crack of thunder was heard yet again, a thick screen of soot hid the side of the hill and yet another maniple of clay warriors burst out of the ground. The earth shook under their heavy hobnailed boots as they marched forward, a terrifying sight, shielded in impenetrable armour. Anticipating the attack from that side as well, Wei’s men, decimated and completely unnerved, took to their heels behind their comrades already rushing outside the walls.

  Only Wei, with a band of Flying Foxes, battled on with savage energy. They were held off with great difficulty by Dan Qing and his warrior monks.

  All at once, Metellus sensed that Yun Shan was in danger and he shouted out her name. Wei wheeled around at the sound of his voice, spotted him and flew at him, spinning his blood-soaked sword.

  Metellus defended himself, returning blow after blow, joining his formidable skill at wielding two swords with the secrets of combat art learned at Li Cheng. But after his initial surprise, Wei reacted with awesome violence. He took a spectacular leap and landed behind the Roman, instantly dealing a blow to his loins. Metellus spun around, dodging the blade, but he could not avoid a long cut on his side, from which blood began to flow. Wei’s foot struck his leg and made him fall to his knees. At that moment, Metellus saw his comrades falling one after another in the arena and Wei’s leering face looming over him as it did now.

  ‘Your comrades were devoured by the dogs,’ Wei shouted, ‘and now you will meet the same end!’

  Metellus felt those words pierce him like a flaming blade and he flipped back with a powerful contraction of his back muscles. He then attacked with all the force he was capable of. The eunuch wavered and backed off at that unexpected assault, and found himself at the rim of the opening from which the last of the Mercenary Devils had emerged.

  Metellus tried to push him in, but Wei swerved to the side and it was the Roman who fell into the void.

  Yu
n Shan, who had not taken her eyes off their duel to the death, thought that Metellus had been killed. She let out a cry and ran as fast as she could to the spot where she had seen him disappear. Wei dived in after his enemy without a moment’s hesitation. He vaulted down to the bottom of the underground stairway and rushed along the corridor to a second staircase, which ended in a grandiose portal. Before him was the enormous tomb of Emperor Yuandi, guarded by a throng of mute ghosts.

  Metellus, hidden behind the sarcophagus, saw Wei standing out against the entrance in his black suit, gripping his bloody sword. He could hear him approaching and backed into the darkest corner of the mausoleum, from where he could attempt an ambush. He moved cautiously among the spectres of the Lost Legion, unmoving and staring with their unchanging smiles of stone.

  Yun Shan had arrived as well and she descended the steps warily, without making a sound. She soon found herself in front of the arched entrance to the mausoleum, almost totally immersed in darkness. She drew a long breath, then slipped inside, settling in a shadowy corner. Only a few oil lamps hanging from the outer walls gave off a dim, trembling glow. The others had burnt out their oil and were smoking.

  Another lamp went out. Metellus realized that it was Wei who was extinguishing them. He was stealing along the walls and blowing on those that were still burning. The huge room was plunged into darkness. The only pale reflection to enter the portal was caused by the complex interaction of refracted light from outside. Metellus moved among the statues, nerves as taut as steel, his heart pounding. He knew that the threat could come from any direction.

  Dan Qing’s voice sounded inside him: ‘Beware Xiong Ying! You are a sentry in the darkness! Where will the enemy’s arrow come from? Where will the dagger strike?’ The memory made his arm dart like a lightning bolt towards the hint of a shadow that had materialized in front of him. The tip of his gladius flashed towards the throat of . . .