The Pirate Empress

by Deborah Cannon

  Quan let his head slump. His body hung limp against the wall. His chained arms had automatically slapped gutward at the impact, but now he let them fall. His battle tunic had taken the brunt of the blow and was ripped across the chest. His ribs ached ferociously, and blood leaked from his wrists where the sharp-edged, iron manacles had cut into flesh.

  At Zheng Min’s orders, the guards unchained Quan and dragged him from the wall to the middle of the stone floor. His ribs were badly bruised and spears of pain jabbed inside his chest every time he breathed. Zheng Min dumped a bucket of frigid urine on his face and he gagged to life. The reek of urine putrefied the air. He strained through the agony and rubbed a raw wrist over his mouth to wipe away the foul taste, the movement viciously stinging his cut flesh. Then he felt a kick in his side. “So you’re awake. Sentry, strip him and put him on the rack.”

  The rack was a bamboo frame the length of a man with his arms outstretched. The guards dragged Quan, naked, onto the rack so that his raw, red wrists and ankles were bound to sturdy struts, his body unsupported. They inclined him horizontally, and left him two feet above the floor with chains hanging from the ceiling.

  “All right, now leave us,” Zheng Min said.

  The guards hesitated.

  “I said, Go!”

  They scattered out the door, their footsteps resounding like metal on the stone steps. There was silence after that. He went to the shelf at the opposite wall and selected two planters of rigid bamboo plants, brought them to the stone table and proceeded to sharpen their tips with his knife. When he had cut arrow-sharp points on six bamboo plants, he shoved the planters under Quan. Quan’s ribs burned, but he knew the pain was nothing compared to what Zheng Min had planned. He could already feel the tips of one or two of the bamboo shoots just touching his skin. “By tomorrow, you will want to talk. In two days you will be screaming to tell me everything you know as to the location of Lotus Lily.”

  “Never,” Quan gasped out hoarsely.

  He was left in the dark. A low light shone in from a tiny barred window over his head to feed sunshine to the bamboo plants; all else was in shadow. Knowing the stakes growing beneath his nakedness would pierce the skin by morning made it impossible to sleep. His arms and legs ached, too, from their unnatural position and from supporting the weight of his torso. But sleep he must, to gain strength, at least until the first sharp blade of the growing bamboo stalks stabbed him in the kidneys.

  No one came to see how he was doing. It was daybreak. He could tell by the arrow of light that shot down from the barred window near the ceiling, striking the bamboo plants at an angle. He was in agony. Knives of pain seared into his flesh along his spine and into his buttocks. He could smell the sweetness of his own blood. It was the longest day he had ever endured. Even the thirst he had been dying to slake was forgotten in the steady agony of the bamboo knives. Already, a half-inch of bamboo had entered his flesh growing hour by hour until they would hit a major artery or organ and kill him.

  Night came. He heard voices: a guard and Zheng Min. Quan recognized the guard as the ambitious soldier and right-hand man of the military governor. The scoundrel was Lieutenant Lu Dao, and he would commit any atrocity if it guaranteed his swift upward climb through the ranks.

  All of Master Yun’s training was needed now if Quan was to get out of here in one piece. He had been an apt pupil, but had left Master Yun for the battlefield before he had achieved full mastery over body and environment. He kept his eyes shut, allowed his muscles to slacken, forced his breathing to slow until it seemed to stop. His heart pittered away to a silent pat, and then went still. Master your form as if you were sparring and spar like it was a form! he murmured. He mimicked a dead fish. The agony of the living bamboo knives faded. His hands and feet went cold, his skin felt as lifeless as the scales of a carp. He was at the edge of consciousness caused by the self-imposed reduction in oxygen to his bloodstream. Something was brought to his nose, but he had no energy to slit his eyes open to see what it was. A smell of iron. Steel. So they were testing his breath on the shiny blade of a knife. No mist would form; he had seen to that.

  “He’s dead,” the guard announced.

  “Shut up,” Zheng Min ordered. “How can he be dead? The bamboo has barely grown an inch! Wake up, man. And answer my question! Where is Lotus Lily?”

  He slapped Quan across the face, but Quan felt nothing.

  Zheng Min put a hand to Quan’s throat. He felt the military governor squeezing his neck in desperation to find a life beat. The lack of oxygen that Quan had forced his body to suffer finally had an impact. He blacked out.

  %%%

  When he awoke, he lay prostrate, curled like an infant, inside a small cage just large enough for one man. He was on the open road, towed in a wheeled wagon by two horses. Up ahead was an escort of armed soldiers, and behind, more soldiers guarded his rear. He was trapped like an animal. Where were they taking him? The muscles of his rib cage throbbed, he was dressed in his torn battle tunic and leggings and he had a white bandage wrapped about his midriff. The nerves in his back sent jabs of pain with every bounce of the cart, but the cuts in his wrists were scabbing over.

  They were well beyond the city limits, far to the north, from the smell of things: dusty soil, the sweetness of mulberry trees, the guano of crows. Was this a rescue or a funeral procession? Or was he now on the way to his execution? No. This couldn’t be a journey to be executed. Why go to such lengths when they could have taken his head in the public square as an example to all? Quan gripped the bars of his prison and rose to a crouch. “Ho, Captain!” he shouted.

  The horseman at the head of the procession turned his head. To Quan’s delight, the young man in the captain’s uniform turned out to be Huang who gave orders for the caravan to continue on course while he dealt with the prisoner. His voice was gruff as he wheeled his horse and cantered back to the rolling cage. He whipped the bars with a cane and Quan drew back to avoid having his knuckles broken. Every muscle in his body screamed.

  “Brigade General,” Huang whispered, and bowed his head in a grim but faint gesture of respect, wary to avoid detection by those under his command. “My apologies for your treatment.”

  Quan tried to rise to his feet, but the cage wasn’t tall enough and he contented himself with painfully squatting. “So, I am a prisoner,” he said grimacing, reliving the bamboo torture. Where are we headed?”

  Some sentries looked their way and Huang banged the cane on the cage again before he touched a finger to his lips. “That is Lu Dao and his men, Zheng Min’s boys. They watch you like a hawk. I’m in charge of escorting you to the Red Desert. They’re here to make sure I do.”

  The bouncing of the wheels of his caged cart was agony. Quan fingered the fabric covering his broken ribs. “Clearly, they know I’m not dead.”

  Huang nodded, trying to keep his horse’s trot in rhythm with the rolling cage, lowering his head as he spoke. “You were left in the dungeon for days, unconscious. The military governor was terrified that he had killed you, and had you removed from the dungeon. He told some story of your vicious attempt to escape, how he had taken you down with the chain and you had accidentally fallen onto the bamboo spikes. His Majesty was unconvinced that you were dead and ordered the physician to examine you. You weren’t breathing. So they decided to bury you. But because you were a traitor you were unfit to be buried with Imperial honours. They packed you into this cage to prevent your body rolling away or being eaten by wolves while we were camped. Orders were to have you buried on the other side of the wall. All would have gone well, and I could have escaped with your body—for it broke my heart to think of you buried on Mongol lands—but then you started to moan. Unfortunately, Zheng Min was witness to it. Luckily, His Majesty had come to see that his orders were carried out and observed your revival, too. Otherwise, I have no doubt the military governor would have finished what he started. He would have killed you. You were barely conscious and kept falling back into the land of s
hadows. The physician patched you up and I was ordered to transport you to the Red Desert, where you will live or die according to the gods’ whims. That is the Emperor’s decree.”

  Quan nodded. He was very thirsty and his stomach grumbled.

  “I have slipped you a bladder of water now and then when no one was looking, and I will do so again tonight.” Huang straightened as the sentry ahead of him turned to look. “Continue on course,” he ordered. He lowered his head. “Some of these men are still loyal to you, Brigade General. You speak, and I promise you your will shall be done.”

  “No,” Quan said. “Obey His Majesty’s orders. I failed him once. And for Lotus Lily’s sake I would defy him again. But this is just punishment for my crime against the Middle Kingdom and I will take what comes.”

  “But Brigade General. If we do this right, no one will know of your escape. There aren’t that many of the faithless among us. We can wipe them out.”

  “No. What good would that do? I could not return to serve my liege. There is no honour in a fugitive’s life. There will be no bloodshed on my account. I won’t have your name tainted. You have a promising future, Captain. Obey your emperor. If the gods will it, I will find a way out of the desert to serve our Imperial ruler with honour once more.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  The Xiongnu

  “You are certain this boy is Quan’s son?”

  “Of course I am, little brother. I took him from his mother, Lotus Lily. She goes by the name of Li now and she is a vicious, bloodthirsty pirate.” Altan had grown to quite a man; he was stockier than Esen with an imposing figure. Esen scowled at the thought of his baby brother usurping him, but all around them, bowmen waited for Altan’s word to act. The camp north of Shanhaiguan housed ten thousand horsemen. Fifty thousand of their stout warriors had returned to hold the conquered garrisons and a further twenty-five were sent home to the Northwest to defend the base camp of women, elderly, and children. The kidnapping of the girl Peng was an outrage, and though Esen cared little, he pretended otherwise. Esen had charge of Wu and in the end it was Wu who would win him back his chiefdom.

  Altan stroked the brown-black bird perched on his leather falconer’s glove. Its roving eye stopped at a movement from Esen. What? You chicken with wolf’s claws. Quit staring at me like that.

  His brother exhaled and his mighty chest grew mightier, raised his arm and set the bird to flight. It reeled into the sky, wings fully spanned, and circled the sun.

  Esen glanced briefly at the Chinese boy who sat on the sandy earth, hands and feet bound. The gemstone was gone, but he still had the boy. Not on his life was he going to let Altan barter Wu’s life for Peng’s. The girl was worthless as far as he was concerned, and the mother had jilted him for his baby brother. She may be powerful, but he had the Chinese Phoenix.

  He strolled over to Wu and kicked him. “Get up, boy. We’re going on a trip.”

  “I don’t want to go on a trip,” Wu whined. “I’m tired and I’m hungry. And I don’t like you.”

  “Well, you’ll like me even less if you don’t get up.”

  “Altan says I am to stay with him.”

  “Screw what Altan says. You’re my prisoner.”

  Wu sat firmly on his seat. “He has not given me orders.”

  Rage boiled in Esen’s gut, and he went to kick the boy, but a booted foot rose out of nowhere and tripped him. He fell flat on his back and the warriors roared. Esen got to his haunches, red-faced, sputtering. Dust puffed up as he flailed to get his balance. How dare Altan ridicule him in front of the men. His men!

  “Get up, big brother,” Altan said. “You’re making a fool of yourself. I told you to treat Chi Quan’s boy with respect. He is the son of a great brigade general. It’s only too bad that Quan was born Chinese and not Mongol. He would have been a great asset to my armies.”

  His armies? Esen spat dust from his mouth, and almost spat into his brother’s face.

  “Behave like a buffoon and be treated like one. The days of mooning over Lotus Lily are done. You lost the regard of your warriors when you foolishly decided to pursue her into oblivion. Now, win it back.” He stuck out a hand to haul him from the dirt.

  Esen slapped his brother’s hand aside. “I wouldn’t have come back if I’d known I’d be treated like scum.”

  “These are precarious days, brother. The Ming Empire hangs in the balance. The Manchus want what is rightfully ours to take. We were here first.”

  “Yeah, tell that to the Chinese. They will not lie down like ill-trained camels while you steal the throne.”

  “You just watch. The Emperor will hand it to me before the year is out. They are this close to cracking.” Altan pinched his fingers together. “I’ve seen the chaos within the army. The sentries are deserting so that we don’t have to take the watchtowers by force. There are rebels on the eastern front who want the same thing as I. The difference is, I will get there first.”

  “Jasmine has disappeared,” Esen said. “Where has she gone? Why has she betrayed us? I can think of only one reason. She has decided that the Ming army will win and so, as always, she defects to the winning side.”

  “Not true,” Altan retaliated. “She has her own reasons for vanishing. I don’t know what they are. But she has not deserted us.”

  “Well, we shall see.” Esen picked himself off the ground with as much dignity as he could muster. “What do you plan to do with the boy? I didn’t bring him to you so that you could barter for the life of a worthless girl.”

  Altan struck him in the face with his fist.

  %%%

  Soon Master Yun would split ways with He Zhu and his charges. But first he must determine Alai’s trustworthiness. The Xiongnu lived deep in the steppe land beyond the eastern borders of the Gobi desert. Before the emergence of the Mongols, it was the Xiongnu, a people of mixed Mongol and Turk blood that were the scourge of the Chinese rulers. They were the nemesis of First Emperor Qin and the succeeding Han dynasty, and they had all but faded from memory when the fierce nomadic tribes of the Mongols hit the desert wastelands. Did she know that she was out of her time?

  He glanced at Zhu and gestured that he wanted to speak to Alai alone. Zhu with Peng on his lap let his gelding drop back while Master Yun crossed over to keep pace with Alai’s hearty steed. She smiled nervously but with unabashed inquisitiveness.

  “You are familiar with these lands,” he said. “You have lived on the steppe all your life?”

  Alai nodded, her braids jostling to the rhythm of her horse’s canter. Master Yun continued his questioning. “How does your family know Altan? Did your father know him long before you were wed into his tribe?”

  “My father met him on a hunting trip. We sought wolf meat and fat because the herd had grown scrawny and sick over the winter and our people were starving. Altan traded with my father for what my tribe needed in exchange for brides.”

  “This past winter?” Master Yun asked.

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, that’s right. How did you know?”

  Master Yun urged Xingbar to a quiet trot. Alai likewise slowed her horse’s gait, and dust settled as their steeds adjusted to the gentler pace. “And you didn’t mind being traded for meat and fat?”

  She looked up brightly at him as if to say, why would I mind? “Altan is very rich and powerful. His camps are moving cities. His favourite women dress like this—” She spread her hands out to draw attention to the lovely silk tunic and trousers she wore, gorgeous purple and green embroidered with gold thread. The colours matched the wide ribbons in her braids. “My tribe has nothing like this. I have never seen anything like this! I was told they were bartered from the Chinese, but I have never seen such as these Chinese.”

  “You don’t get around much, do you?” He Zhu said, slipping up beside them on his gelding.

  Master Yun admonished him. “You were eavesdropping?”

  “I’m sorry, Master Yun. I couldn’t help but overhear.”

  No matter, He Z
hu must learn of Alai’s true situation sooner or later.

  “In fact,” Alai said, puzzled. “Altan’s people don’t speak like my people. I had to learn to speak like them.” She looked around at her environment then back at them as though she were seeing them for the first time. “Your clothes are so different from what I know of the Chinese and their armies.” She paused. “So, you are not warriors of Emperor Qin’s army?”

  “Whatever makes you say that?” Zhu demanded.

  Alai was clearly perplexed. “My people fight the armies of Emperor Qin. We call him Jackal-Hawk, Tiger-Wolf, for he possesses the worst of all those beasts. He obliterated hundreds of thousands of lives on his way to the Imperial throne. We are defeated, chased back into the desert where our livestock starve for pasture. Our population is so decimated that we seldom venture far except to hunt. Most of the tribes of the Xiongnu have withdrawn from fighting with the Chinese. My father says that one day we will be numerous and strong again, but that time is not yet come.”

  “No kidding,” Zhu said. “Alai, Emperor Qin has been dead these thousand years.”

  Master Yun reached out to grab the bridle to her horse as it bucked from her involuntary jerk. “Are you all right?” he asked, returning control of the horse to her.

  “I don’t understand,” Alai said.

  “Don’t you know that Altan and his armies are not Xiongnu?” Master Yun shook his head. “Didn’t you think it strange that they had never heard of the Xiongnu and that they called themselves Mongols?”

  “That is a broad term used by all peoples of the desert. And you’re wrong Master Yun. They had heard of us. They only thought that the Xiongnu had retreated out of the path of the Silk Road. And we had. It wasn’t worth all the killing for some pieces of fruit and a bauble or two of jade.”

  Zhu suddenly grabbed hold of Alai’s bridle and halted her horse. Master Yun stopped as well. “Master Yun. Explain. What is all this about?” Zhu demanded.

  Master Yun turned back to the young woman. “The Mongols may or may not be descended from your people. I don’t know. But you and they are closely related. You are nomads and warlike just like them. I don’t say this in a bad way. We are all warlike and maybe I am wrong and we are all bad. But the difference between the Chinese and the peoples of the steppe are marked. We build walled cities. Your people tear them down. Now we have come to an impasse and we must choose sides. Your people will not be defeated, but neither will ours. No one will give way. We must decide what kind of future we want to live in.