SHIANG
Page 11
They did not have long to be afraid. Thomas finished them quickly, with blows across the throat, each a hair’s breadth above the armoured collar. Gabriel saluted with his blade as the man looked back.
‘Well done, brother,’ Gabriel said.
Thomas grinned and pushed open the doors to the throne room. They strode in together, with the woman half-hiding her face with one hand and Lord Ran stumbling and dazed as if he had lost his wits.
They had not stopped since passing under the shadow of the gatehouse. Gabriel still expected an army to be waiting for him in that room, but he had left a path of dead swordsmen behind on the way there. Blood dripped in a ring around him when he stood still. He flicked his sword and a spatter of it marked the polished floor.
At the far end, the young king rose from his seat and took up the sword of the Yuan dynasty. Gabriel could feel the power of the thing as he stalked down the length of the royal hall. It awoke a hunger in him and he remembered once again all those he would like to see restored to the world. Lord Ran knew the secret of it. All he needed was another stone.
‘Your Majesty, you won’t believe me, but this hall is just the same as it was a thousand years ago, more. You potters have maintained it well.’
Gabriel was moving quickly as he spoke, with Thomas like a leopard at his side. Sanjin was slower, falling behind with his half-foot. They left the young woman holding the leash of the fool and Lord Ran weeping behind them.
Gabriel lengthened his stride as he reached the king.
‘I thought your swordsmen would be better, Your Majesty,’ he said.
‘We sent the best of them away,’ the king replied.
He tried to move suddenly as he spoke, but Gabriel was ready for him. He watched the young man swing and lifted his blade to let them ring together. To his astonishment, the royal weapon passed right through his own, as if the steel was just clay. Gabriel had to pivot sharply on one heel to avoid the sweep of the blade ending in his ribs.
Yet whatever the magic of the sword, the wielder was still little more than a boy. Gabriel found himself holding the stub of a blade, just four inches from the hilt. With a shrug, he pushed it into the king’s neck.
The young man stared at him in shock. Gabriel reached out and took the Yuan sword as the king’s hand opened and life fled.
‘Thank you. It is a fine blade.’
As Gabriel sat on the throne with the royal sword across his knees, he frowned to himself. It was oddly disappointing. The meeting hall was empty except for the few he had brought to that place. He shook his head, dissatisfied. He had been a long time in the grey land. Happiness was elusive. Still, he had to seek it out, like prising a sea urchin from a rock. Beyond the spikes and injuries, the flesh would still be sweet and good. He looked up at the thought, seeing the young woman he had brought to the great hall. She too was marked in blood, with spatters of it right across her dress. Her eyes were dark with horror at all she had seen that day.
Gabriel breathed out, relaxing into the chair.
‘Come here,’ he said. ‘I will have the royal dressmakers replace that rag.’
He watched as she came forward, as if held by strings only she could see. As she reached him, she sank down on the steps, so that her dress spread around her. She sat with her head bowed.
Gabriel looked at her, seeing the beauty that had caught his attention on the street. His wife’s name had been Laila, but that did not seem to suit her. He thought back to the queen of his day.
‘I will call you Song,’ he said. ‘It was once a royal name, a royal house. Does it please you?’
She used the sleeve of her dress to wipe her nose and tears away. After a beat, she nodded. He smiled, satisfied.
‘Good. This is the first day, my dear. You’ll see some changes now …’
A note sounded and was gone. He hesitated. Neither Thomas nor Sanjin had reacted, but the fool on the leash had turned like a dog to its master. Gabriel blinked. It had not so much been a sound as a throb in the air, a pulse, or a call. It had come from the west, impossibly far away. He rubbed his face, suddenly weary.
‘Thomas? Summon the court. I think I will speak to them before we eat. And send for a barber to shave me.’
10
Militia
Taeshin stood on a grey hillside strewn with loose rocks. Nothing grew in that place, while below on the plain, two vast armies clashed. He watched in awe and resignation. This then, was death.
Other men had been nearby when he opened his eyes. Without a word to him, they had walked down to join the ranks of the armies below, taking up fallen shields and swords. Taeshin did not know why he had not, nor why he still dreamed of the world he had known. He remained, unable to go on or back, in a place of grey dust, waiting. When he clenched his eyes and his fists, the sounds began to fade and he was no longer on that hill above the plain. If he strained until he trembled, he could sense another place in the darkness, where frightened eyes watched him walk back and forth.
Gabriel paced in the light of candles. Two hundred men and women had been rounded up in the night to stand before him. Some still sobbed, while the rest were silent and watchful, prepared to wait for whatever they would hear. Most people could not be shepherds, he thought. They were willing to endure hard work and cold winters to feed their families. That was who they were. It should not matter to most of them who sat on the throne, not beyond a few close friends and blood relations of the king.
‘My name is Gabriel Hernan Cortez,’ he said to them. ‘I was once ambassador to this city, oh, beyond the memories of …’
He paused and waved the words away. They watched him like cows waiting to be slaughtered, he realised. He had seen that once, when he was a boy and slaughterhouses had run all day and night. The animals had stared in the darkness when he’d raised his torch. They had the blackest of eyes, he remembered. The people in that hall had the same look in the candlelight, as if they saw death.
‘What matters tonight is that I defeated the Yuan in combat. However you choose your kings, that should suffice for most of you. I am willing to toe the line against any champion you wish to bring, but until then, I …’
He broke off again as he heard the same sound that had thumped through the air earlier that day. None of those assembled to hear him reacted to it.
‘What lies in that direction …?’ Gabriel asked them.
No one dared reply and he was on the verge of losing his temper when the young woman kneeling at his feet spoke.
‘The west, Your Majesty. The realm.’
He shook his head.
‘Beyond that, further. I sense something far off … What lies beyond the realm in this age? Does Spain still stand? Or Rome?’
The names meant nothing to them and he frowned. The woman he had named Song could only raise her empty hands in confusion.
‘My lord, what could lie beyond the realm?’
Gabriel blinked at her in disbelief.
‘Truly? You have lost a great deal, my dear, whether you know it or not. Any of you? What nations are to the west?’
A man raised his head in the crowd, seeing the monster who had killed his king. He spoke with thick hatred.
‘There is a city named Darien some thousands of miles west. A realm as great as this one, so it is said. Perhaps you should seek it out.’
Gabriel chuckled.
‘Well done. I had begun to think there was no spirit of defiance in any of you! How the rest of you cower! I should make you my servant, boy.’
‘I would not serve you,’ the man replied. He stood with his hand on his sword, ready to be attacked.
Gabriel took a deep breath and released it, feeling all tension leave him.
‘I have seen enough blood today. I summoned you merely to say this: go about your business. Make bread in the kitchens. Tend the royal horses. Make cloth, wash, mend – do whatever it is you all do in the royal household. But do it for me. There, I have said it all. Return to your duties.’
‘Did either of you feel that, before?’ Gabriel said.
Thomas shook his head and Sanjin shrugged.
‘Where is the fool?’
Thomas jerked his head and Gabriel saw the last of the returnees had been roped to a choir stall like a dog. The fool’s trousers were dark with urine and as he saw Gabriel looking at him, he beamed.
‘His mind has gone,’ Thomas said. ‘I don’t know if he could even be healed now. It might be better to put him out of his misery.’
The fool shook with laughter, making a ‘shee shee’ sound that echoed unpleasantly from the stone ribs above. Slowly, he raised his hand and pointed west.
Riding three hundred miles had brought Hondo a sense of mental clarity, if not peace. He watched the crowd with no sign of the turbulence that troubled him. The city of Shiang was a distant place to those who lived in those hills, made real by annual visits of tithe and tally men from the capital. Only the schoolteacher had been born near to Shiang, Hondo had been told. They seemed to think that was a mark of high status. The rest had lived and bred in those same farms and fields for the passage of centuries.
Their faces were a little longer than the people of home, the eyes deep-set and darkened by long lashes, so that a few of the women were almost presentable. Yet they had unfurled a woven image of the Yuan king and laid a long feast table in a meadow for his champions. They too were of the nation. Hondo only wished he could feel as they felt, without his constant need to reflect and examine. To live a simple, rustic life! Hondo knew he would envy them when he was a thousand miles away. At that moment, however, he found them intensely annoying.
Hondo sensed another villager turn to look at him in delight, seeking out some shared joy. He had seen the same impulse at weddings and the births of healthy children. There was no harm in it, he reminded himself. Joy was a fragile thing, but it could overwhelm a man.
Whenever those seeking that connection actually met his eyes, they looked away immediately. It hurt him when it happened, like a sliver of ice pushed into his soul. Yet he could not pretend to fellow feeling he did not share! He could not laugh, not when he knew his eyes remained as cold as he did. Other men flinched from him if he aped their roars and bantering talk. They sensed a falseness, an awareness that watched them still.
He wondered if the twins felt the same, though as they hardly ever spoke, it was difficult to tell what those two thought about anything. Hondo had accepted them as travelling companions, but the pair were so self-contained that he thought he would never truly know them. It was a reserve he could respect. Some men were made for coldness, he thought. It was as much the nature of a man as desire in the presence of beauty. If anything separated man from …
Hondo’s train of thought came to a halt as Bosin came around the corner with one of the twins on his shoulders. The twin clamped Bosin’s head so hard with his legs that the big man had gone a bright red, but he still staggered on through the delighted crowd.
The village blacksmith was some way behind on the road, bearing his own twin and doing his best to catch up. Hondo sighed to himself. He had never met anyone quite like the giant swordsman before. He was not sure he was enjoying the experience. The crowd were chanting Bosin’s name, Hondo realised. They had asked for a test of strength with the local man and Hondo had been framing a polite refusal when Bosin agreed and heaved one of the twins to his shoulders. It had been fairly chaotic after that, with the people of the village in fits of laughter as they set off.
The two pairs had run to a distant oak tree and back. Some of the village had gone with the staggering blacksmith to urge on their man. Hondo had seen with some surprise that at least as many cheered for Bosin even against their own. The big warrior seemed to invite laughter, but it was without rancour. Hondo shook his head. He would never understand it. Some men found each meeting with another took a certain effort, a slight strain that could exhaust them over the passage of a day. Others, like Bosin, seemed to be invigorated by the same contact with others. There was no artifice involved. Bosin liked people. They sensed it and liked him in return. That was all there was to it.
The finish line was a horse trough in the centre of the square. Hondo wondered if he should be pleased one of the royal companions was at least winning the race, but it was hard not to begrudge the morning they had lost. He watched as Bosin laid a hand in triumph on the trough. The twin on his shoulders leaped down and bowed to all points of the compass, punching the air and launching flying kicks to roars of the crowd. A great luncheon had been assembled on tables in the open air, ready for their return. The entire village had the air of a harvest festival, or a wedding. They would certainly not forget the arrival of the four masters. Hondo wondered if they would be able to recall his name when they told the story of the race for generations to come. Sourly, he rather doubted it.
Bosin and the twin – though whether it was Hi or Je, Hondo could not tell – went back to clap the blacksmith home. Bosin was still bright red in the face and pouring with sweat, but he roared and chanted with the rest, gesturing to the trough. The second twin was just as animated, pulling his legs up into a crouch and balancing on the blacksmith’s shoulders like a monkey.
The poor villager was near dead on his feet from the run. A mile there and back with a man on his shoulders had been a fine test of endurance. Hondo admired the blacksmith’s spirit when he straightened up and walked the last few paces with something like dignity, laying his hand on the stone trough to a great shout from the crowd. Hondo watched Bosin embrace the fellow and yell something into his ear as the second twin leaped down and turned cartwheels and somersaults.
Bosin headed for the feasting table. He had spotted a roast pig and felt as if he could eat the entire thing himself. He came to a skidding halt when he saw Hondo.
‘There you are!’ Bosin said.
Hondo had to steel himself not to step back as Bosin advanced on him. The man’s sheer size never failed to make him nervous. To his horror, Bosin tried to reach around him and pick him up. Hondo had to strike with a knuckle into the elbow joint, hard enough to numb the entire arm.
To his astonishment, Bosin did not seem to notice and heaved him into the air like a child.
‘Put me down, ox,’ Hondo said, flushing. ‘I will not be handled.’
‘Let them see you!’ Bosin said, laughing. ‘This man is the greatest sword of Shiang!’ he cried to the crowd. ‘The sword saint!’
Hondo gripped one of the hands that held him, turning it hard against the joint so that Bosin grunted with sudden pain and surprise.
‘Put me down,’ Hondo said.
The big man did so, rubbing his wrist with the other hand. Hondo saw the smiles fade around him and he was suddenly angry with them all.
‘I wish to meditate in my room. Well done, Master Bosin. It was a fine race.’
To say a word more would be to unleash a bitter tirade, Hondo could feel it. So he clamped his jaw shut and bowed to his three companions. The twins looked crestfallen, he saw. That gave him some satisfaction at least.
Little by little, the crowd fell silent as Hondo walked through them. He felt a cold anger simmering in him at Bosin. The man seemed to have no sense of dignity, for himself or anyone else. In quieter moments, Hondo might have envied it. At that point, he felt nothing more than humiliation – and as every man knew, humiliation was brother to rage. He turned his back on them and tried not to hear when they began to roar Bosin’s name once more.
Hondo had covered fifty miles that day and he was no longer a young man. He tried to meditate, but when the twins came back to their cots in the little room abov
e the tavern, they found him snoring softly. Hi and Je looked to one another in private communication then, their eyes bright with the evening and with wine.
Gabriel woke to find the lady he had taken as his mistress trying on a new dress. It seemed Song understood how to make the palace servants leap to do her bidding. They ran at her command and pinned and stitched as she directed. From the king’s bed, Gabriel lay and watched her, wondering what he had wrought. Taking her from her guards had been an expression of power rather than desire, at least at first. He’d been wary of sudden lusts after so long in the grey land. Yet she had come to his bed willingly enough the night before. He’d expected tears, but she’d surprised him, pressing him down and sitting astride. He’d let her pin his arms for a time and when he’d tired of that, he had been gentler than he’d planned to be. When he’d slept at last, it was with flashes of terror that he might awake in the other place, with all pleasures stolen and only eternity as a comfort. He’d clawed the air, he remembered, but been drawn down even so. As always, his dreams had been terrible. Yet the sun had risen and he had opened his eyes to industry and bustling servants. Song had brought something like order back to the royal rooms.
He raised himself up on his elbows and scratched his side, seeing flakes of dried blood come loose. Gabriel grimaced at that. He was not a savage. In his first life, he had always been a fastidious man, preferring to wash two or three times a day. Yesterday had been for death and killing. Today he would bathe and make love to his mistress. He would find a clean set of armour and take up the wonderful sword King Yuan-Choji had wielded. Perhaps he would ride in the royal gardens. It had been a long time since he’d known simple pleasures, or anything but war. Gabriel could smell grass and flowers, though such things … He jerked as he felt the pulse beat through the air once again. He knew the location of west in that moment.
His mood darkening, Gabriel leaped naked from the bed, ignoring the squeaks and scurrying of servants as they dashed out of the rooms.