A Game of Horns: A Red Unicorn Anthology

by Gregory D. Little

  Huang Fa stalked through the cold predawn in a sullen rage, and for a moment he tried to conjure an image of Yan. Walking a hundred li in a single night can drive the humanity from a man, make him hard and cold. Fatigue had left him reeling, and the icy winds wafting down from the Altai Mountains over the barren gray stones had drained the warmth from him. He had only one sandal, and so he hobbled as best he could. In a jest of fate, his sandaled foot had developed blisters that bled, and so hurt more than his naked foot.

  Before the sun was even a sullen smudge on the smoke-gray sky, he spotted his roan horse, gazing down in a desultory stare at the barren rocks, its long dark mane and tail gusting in the wind. The barbarians that had stolen her had left her tied to the only tree within three li, and they’d fallen asleep under it. For ten hours Huang Fa had been wondering how best to kill them.

  Huang Fa felt a touch on his elbow. “Are you sure you want to do this?” whispered the monk with no name.

  Huang Fa paused and turned toward the monk, who was but a shadow in the darkness, with a bit of moonlight shining upon his clean-shaven head. The monk had no name, for he had renounced it. He whispered urgently, “These men are not killers. They were kind enough to merely sneak off with all your belongings, sparing your life. To take theirs would be to return compassion with brutality.”

  Huang Fa argued, “The barbarians only stole the horse before, but they won’t make the same mistake again. Once they open my bags and find the dragon’s tooth …”

  The monk did not argue. He knew the barbarians would never relinquish such a great treasure. Yet the dragon’s tooth meant little to Huang Fa. He had to save his mare. The barbarians could not guess the worth of such a fine mount. These men consumed horses as if they were chickens. Even if they did not butcher her, they would likely only wait until she bore her foal and then harvest her mare’s milk to make liquor.

  Huang Fa was determined to get his mare back at any cost, and he could not let them live.

  Dread clenched his stomach. He wasn’t sure how many men he might have to face. He was determined to use the wizard warrior Jiang Ziya’s wolf strategy of battle—to attack when least expected, at the weakest point.

  Stepping carefully, Huang Fa strode over the sparse prairie, with only the barest of grass. There was no rustling of feet, no brush of his pants woven from silky China grass as he rushed into the camp.

  One barbarian, wearing a hairy vest of musk ox hide and a fur cap, sat on guard, but had fallen asleep with his back to a nearly leafless saxaul tree. Another lay nearby rolled in a blanket. The two had camped without a fire.

  In the gloom, Huang Fa heard a sound and dully registered that a snow pheasant was already up, thundering down from a rocky summit to take cover in the rocks. To the south, in the hills beyond a glacial river, a wolf howled.

  Huang Fa strode angrily to the young barbarian on guard duty, grabbed his own bronze battle-ax from the young man’s sleeping hands, and smashed the man’s face before he had even a chance to rouse. Blood blackened the man’s chin, and he choked out a “Gah!” as he tried to hold himself upright. Huang Fa struck another blow to the skull to finish him.

  The thief’s bowlegged friend must have heard the skirmish, for he gave a yelp of warning and hopped out of his blanket, then leaped over the stones like a jerboa.

  Want to race? Huang Fa thought. He hurled his ax. A blow to the right lung knocked the barbarian to the ground, and there was no fight left in him. Huang Fa went to the man. “You think it funny to steal a man’s horse and his sandal too? Laugh now.” He split the man’s skull with his bronze ax.

  The deed would haunt him. He might make a joke while killing another, but it was a foul thing to do. Damn the horse thieves.

  He flipped the man over to make sure that he was not breathing. What he saw sickened him. It was not a man, but a boy—barely thirteen, just gaining his adult size. He lay back, gazing blankly at the gray sky, and his eyes were fixed. His teeth had all been filed down to points, and a tattoo upon his chin showed the trunk of a tree in black, rising up to his forehead. Branches from it spread out upon either side of his cheeks and forehead, creating the holy symbol of the Tree of Life.

  Huang Fa wished he had never seen that face. He wondered if the boy was a shaman. He went to the other barbarian, found that he too was no older than a child, and that his teeth had been filed to points, and that he bore the same tribal markings.

  Only five years ago, Huang Fa thought, I was their age.

  No words could adequately describe how much their faces disturbed him. Though his stomach was empty, he lurched away from camp and did not return until his heart quit pounding. He avoided peering into the faces of the dead.

  “Bojing,” Huang Fa softly called to his mare. “Are you all right?” He stepped close to let her catch his scent. She nuzzled the hollow beneath his chin, and he stroked her neck gratefully. She was the finest horse he’d ever seen. He had bought her from an Arab band, and now he stroked her side fondly. For weeks now he had only walked her over the mountains, afraid that the hard journey might cause her to lose the foal.

  It would have been a shame to let the barbarians eat such a majestic horse.

  Huang Fa checked his saddlebags, where he retrieved his left sandal. “Ha, ha,” he said to the dead barbarians.

  His paltry supplies were intact, except that the boys had eaten the last of his wrinkled apples. But the silver was there, with precious ointments of frankincense for Yan, opium tar, and a single dragon’s fang to sell to the apothecaries.

  The Taoist crept up to the camp at last. “May I fix us some beans?” he asked humbly.

  Huang Fa fumed. The monk was not a coward. He was heading back from Persia, where Emperor Qin would likely cut out his tongue because of his religious views. The emperor hated Taoists and Buddhists.

  But the monk had refused to fight the barbarians. A man who would not kill animals, who would not even eat meat, could not be counted on in a fight. Right now, Huang Fa did not feel any more tolerant of the Taoist than the emperor did. Damn the Taoist and his compassion.

  “No, you may not,” Huang Fa said.

  The monk merely bowed in acquiescence.

  Satisfied at last, Huang Fa built a small fire. Fuel was scarce, so he settled on dried dung from a wild ass that had ranged this far north in the spring. Soon the fire blazed like a gem. The skull of a giant ox, bleached by the sun, lay in the golden grass beneath the tree, its broad black horns faded like ash. A poem was scrawled on it in charcoal.

  A cold moon sets

  below these holy mountains.

  My hands are so cold.

  Is this where the gods

  come to die?

  Huang Fa glanced down toward the skirts of the mountain and saw that, indeed, from here the full moon was setting far below him in the southwest, so that it seemed he looked upon it as if he were a god in the clouds. It floated in the lavender dawn like a glowing pearl beneath the water, slowly descending into the mists. The mountainside was covered in black and barren stone for many li. Huang Fa hoped to glimpse lights—the twinkling of campfires. He and the monk had been chasing the season’s last caravan; it could not be more than a few days ahead.

  As weary as the dead, Huang Fa rolled himself in the barbarian boy’s blanket and tried to sleep. But the faces of the dead boys haunted him, and in a fitful but troubled sleep, he dreamt of young boys that circled his camp, laughing cruelly as they prepared their vengeance.

  O O O

  The Altair Mountains were black, but the desert at their feet was red. Red rocks and red sand. Even the sparse grasses were coated with red dust.

  Huang Fa and the monk led the mare into a small fortress with adobe walls at a trading village called Arumchee on the border of the Taklamakan Desert.

  For two days, Huang Fa had not slept. At night he dreamt of vengeful spirits circling in the grass, and by day he felt dazed and exhausted.

  Every soul embodies both the yin and yang, he t
old himself. Each is balanced between darkness and light. I gave into the darkness for a moment, and now I must seek balance again.

  The thought soothed him. Still, it felt comforting to hear the crow of chickens, to see silk garments hanging upon bushes outside of the adobe huts, and to smell fresh beans and chicken cooking in the houses. It felt even better to be inside the strong walls of a fortress, even if those walls were as red as the desert.

  Huang Fa needed to report the killings. Slaying raiders wasn’t a simple matter, even if it was just a pair of young horse thieves. This had been a righteous kill, and everyone needed to know that—otherwise there could be reprisals.

  Huang Fa wasn’t worried for himself. He was just passing through. Six weeks from now, he’d be home, safe in his cabin on the lake. He’d have a fine horse for his stables and a dowry to give Yan’s father.

  But the traders and settlers here had to live among the barbarians. Mostly, the settlers were jade carvers who worked the stone gathered near Black Mountain, but every year there were more and more caravans heading for Persia and Greece. The caravanserais paid good bribes and hefty tolls to the barbarians for safe passage; these people needed to know that the barbarian raiders had failed to keep their bargain—and so paid with their lives.

  Huang Fa reported to the garrison commander, a wealthy fellow named Chong Deming who wore a wide golden belt of office over armor made from layers of red silk. He sat on a stool outside a weathered manor house while sipping porridge from a red ceramic bowl. He had white hair and a beard so long he must have thought himself the equal to one of the emperor’s counselors.

  A barbarian woman in bright blue silks squatted on the ground next to him, as if she was his wife. Huang Fa humbly kowtowed, joining his fists together and bowing solemnly, and then approached and bore his news upon further invitation.

  Alarm grew evident on the commander’s face on hearing Huang Fa’s news.

  “You killed two barbarian boys?” Chong Deming asked, his penetrating gaze spearing Huang Fa. “Which tribe?”

  Huang Fa shrugged. He had come across so many barbarians the past few months that he no longer knew or cared what tribe they came from.

  “What did they look like?”

  “They were merely youths,” Huang Fa answered frankly. “They wore bright pants of purple, and their teeth were filed down like fangs. Their faces were tattooed with the symbol of the Holy Tree. One had this hunting spear,” he said, holding up a javelin with a dark-green jade tip, “and the other had a bow made from the horn of an aurochs.”

  Chong Deming pulled at his beard thoughtfully. “Oroqin barbarians,” he said. “As I thought. Normally they are peaceful people, eating sheep and goats from their flocks, and hunting for wild asses in the mountains. But their animals have been hit hard by a plague of anthrax, and so the barbarians have been starving for the past few seasons.

  “Some of their men tried to rob a caravan last spring. The caravan guards made quick work of these unskilled barbarians, and my men hunted those that escaped. We tracked them for five days and caught them in their yurts in the mountains. We hunted them from chariots and finished off the men with our long-handled halberds. But we spared the women and children. We did not have the heart …”

  The old general fell silent, and Huang Fa looked to the monk for his reaction. The young man shook his bald head sadly and asked the general, “Did your compassion gain them nothing?”

  The general mourned, “I’d hoped they would find their way back into the mountains, that their own people would feed them, but I fear that they are doomed.” He looked to Huang Fa. “Did these two young men have any distinguishing features?”

  “One was a runty kid that squinted, with bowed legs. The other was clean and handsome. He wore a necklace made of jade and bear’s teeth.”

  At that, Chong Deming’s face fell, and he peered down into his bowl of morning porridge thoughtfully. Steam curled up from it. At long last, he blew over the wide lip of the clay bowl, but did not sip from it. “That would be Battarsaikhan’s son, Chuluun.” His voice became soft, frightened. “You’ve heard of Battarsaikhan?”

  The name stirred at the back of Huang Fa’s brain, like a rat in its burrow. “I think …”

  “It means ‘hero who wins without battle.’ He is a hunchback, a powerful sorcerer who kills with magic rather than ax or bow. He is the most dangerous man in all these mountains. His oldest sons died in our attack at White Ox River last summer.”

  “Gah,” the monk muttered. The news was terrible.

  “Battarsaikhan was in the mountains then, training the boy that you killed,” Chong Deming said. His voice came hoarse, bitter with sorrow. “Now, the sorcerer has no children left. Couldn’t you have let those boys live? They were just trying to feed their starving tribe. You could have just taken your horse …”

  Huang Fa stared at the old commander wordlessly, shame thick in his throat. “I did not know of their need. I did not want them coming for me again. You, as a general, know that only a fool spares an enemy.”

  “Then because you were afraid of retribution, I fear you shall suffer retribution,” Chong Deming said. “If I were you, I’d run from here as fast as I could. The last caravan of the season passed the fortress only two days ago. There was a wizard traveling with it. He might be able to protect you. You can catch them if you hurry—but you should leave now. Battarsaikhan will be reeling from rage, and his spells can reach far.”

  “I am sorry,” Huang Fa said. “I …” He got an idea. The traders paid tolls every year, and among the barbarians, it was said that the life of a man was worth little. “Can we send a gift to this sorcerer? A peace offering?”

  “Do you think anything in the world will be enough to assuage his wrath?” the monk asked.

  There was little in Huang Fa’s saddlebags that might be worth the life of a man’s last son. The silver was a soft metal, of less value than bronze to the barbarians. The spices … were questionable. Huang Fa answered, “I have a dragon’s tooth that was dug from out of the stone in Persia. It is worth the price of many horses.”

  He went to his saddle packs and pulled out the tooth—eight inches long, serrated, and curved like a dagger. Huang Fa had seen the giant dragon skull encased in stone that it had been pulled from. It had been polished by its previous owner so that the ancient bone glowed like amber.

  “Perhaps,” Chong Deming said thoughtfully, “it will please. Perhaps to a sorcerer it will be worth enough.”

  O O O

  For four days, Huang Fa traveled with the monk and led his mare, skirting the grasslands at the edge of the desert, chasing the wizard’s caravan. Here there had once been wild asses, giant wild bulls, and red deer in abundance, and cheetahs to hunt them. But over the past twenty years the rising number of caravans had driven many herds away, and the plague of anthrax had killed most other animals. Some said that the caravans themselves spread the disease. It was well-known that one could catch it from handling the skins of animals that had died from the plague.

  Now, the red plains seemed barren, almost lifeless. In two days Huang Fa saw only a few wild ostriches and a couple of giant elephants that the emperor’s men sometimes harnessed and trained for war. Such beasts were difficult for the barbarians to hunt, he knew. The swift ostriches were a temptation, forever running just out of the bow’s range. The elephants, masters of the plains, were four times the weight of the smaller Indus elephants, and had rust-colored tusks that could grow to over twelve feet in length. The bull elephants sometimes became mad and attacked even caravans.

  For Huang Fa to travel past such a herd in a caravan was a bold deed. To creep past them with only a monk at his side, pulling his mare on a rope, was terrifying. Yet to his surprise, the larger bulls only sniffed the air with their trunks and flapped their ears in agitation. They did not stomp the grass or throw hay in the air. They did not charge.

  Still, the young men kept a respectful distance and traveled as long as they coul
d. Such was Huang Fa’s urgency to find the caravan, to get home to Yan, that he did not want to camp until well after dark.

  The monk spoke little as they traveled. He plodded along, staring ahead evenly, whispering poems that he composed in his head.

  Huang Fa was bumbling along, eyes growing heavy, imagining what it would be like to take Yan into his arms at last when he dreamed of the feral children.

  There were dozens of them, circling a campfire in a large cavern. They were thin creatures with protruding bellies and skin clinging tightly over their ribs. Their bare backs had been tattooed with images of snake-headed lizards. Their gaunt faces were just flesh-colored bones, and their teeth had all been filed.

  There were children of all ages in the group, from toddlers to the ages of ten or eleven. They were practically naked, all bare flesh.

  Now, a couple of the nearest turned, peered at him hungrily, and jostled their neighbors. They too turned to search for him, but many of the children seemed unable to spot him, as if he were far away.

  Suddenly, in the midst of the bonfire, a sorcerer appeared, as if bursting up from the flames. He wore a mask of red jade, a demon’s face, and he wore a cloak made of tiger hide. He danced among the flames, hopping among the coals without apparent harm. He carried a huge rattle made from a giant cobra’s skull in his right hand and held the dragon’s tooth in his left. He sang as he danced, his voice rising and falling in the quavering melody of grief.

  The children around the fire chanted words that Huang Fa could not quite understand. They pounded their right fists into their left hands, and one by one it seemed that all of the children became more aware of him. They began turning and peering at him with greater eagerness. Huang Fa spotted saliva dripping down the chin of one starving girl toddler, her mouth full of fangs.

  Suddenly the sorcerer snarled a curse, almost spitting his words, and hurled the dragon tooth through the darkness. Huang Fa jerked, as one sometimes will in sleep, as he tried to dodge. The fang hit Huang Fa in the chest.