by Matt Weber
A fierce bombardment from a well-defended point on the other side of the city would have provided that distraction. That had been the Eunuch’s role: To draw out the King’s attention with a pyrotechnical cannonade using his late-bloomed talent. But there had been no cannonade, or as good as none. The lookouts had not been distracted; the lights of the furiously improvised construction had been seen.
Or perhaps, Datang thought mid-leap, an ageless woman in an unfashionable qipao had furnished the critical hint. In all events, the Demon Guard now rushed to take a handful of fencers and a battalion of noncombatants in the rear.
She was not sure what she would do when she reached the Eunuch’s forces. It barely mattered whether they knew the Demon Guard was coming; they had brought no ordnance, placing all their hope in speed, and the Iron Eunuch’s better fighters were with him in the city center. Perhaps the men themselves could rappel down the canyon face; perhaps they could disperse; perhaps they could meet the Guard in a posture of surrender. In any event, they could take a moment to speak to the Deity Who Waits, and petition for a good rebirth.
Datang flew from the rowhouses onto a less hospitable pagoda roof as arrows sliced the air; the force of her landing pulverized the ceramic shingles, spraying a cloud of shards into the street below. She stomped as hard as she could, each fleet step sending a small razor-shower down on the enemy. Her next leap was not so lucky. More than the shingles had deteriorated; her boot punched through the roof of the rotting shack like kindling. Mercifully, the rest of the roof gave way as her body followed, and she plunged into a cascade of pain and rubble.
Datang did not know how long consciousness had been gone when she regained it, but wasted no time on conjecture; she tried to leap up, stumbled, then wrested balance from her reeling mind and stood. A hiss intruded on her concentration; absentmindedly, she reached out to swat at it and struck wand-thick wood, tipped with feathers, still quivering in the wall beside her. “Attend,” someone called, “and learn how the Demon Guard deals with rooftop shingle-pelters.”
An indistinct shape rushed toward her, clanking and polychrome. She drew her blade in time for a drunken parry, though she was not sure quite what she parried. She moved by rote, as best she could, dimly aware of what she faced but distant from the fear of pain that makes an iron defense into steel. She parried again, then lurched and hit something. There was a wet crack, a spat oath, but the sword—her vision had resolved enough to know it was a sword—kept at her, faster, angrier.
The light dimmed in the hut. There was a downward motion, a crumpling, a clatter of armor. She ran her fingertips over her face and felt a sticky spray.
“Surrender,” said Datang, “lest I summon someone even larger than you to strike you down from behind.”
“What, surrender to an ally?” said Lin Gyat.
“Ah,” said Datang, her sword-point bobbing drunkenly before she let it dip. “Zao gao! Derelict! How are you here? No,” she said before he could answer. “You chase horses—and catch them, worse luck! You brim with speed, I recollect it. But what befell the northern enfilade?”
“The Iron Eunuch could not perform,” said Lin Gyat. “He failed to summon the requisite firmness of resolve, or perhaps the necessary length of concentration.” He paused. “Much as he might desire to hurl his thick ropes of white flame into the damp courtyard in which his enemies—-”
“Zao gao,” Datang repeated, relishing the Gardener oath, “leave off, goat!”
“It would have been a better joke had the King hidden in a cave.”
“The Priestkiller Worm hides in a cave.”
“In any case,” said Lin Gyat, “I am no eunuch, nor are my own powers afflicted by flaccidity.”
His voice came from higher than it had seemed to. Datang looked up, then farther up, craning her head back almost as though she were looking at the sun at noon. The motion made her dizzy; she reeled, then put a hand out to catch herself. It landed on a wall of skin and muscle. There was a rush of air, not unlike the hisses of the arrows that had chased her blood that night; something closed around her bicep like iron, which at once bruised and steadied her. It was warm, that hand (of course it was a hand, though huge enough that its forefinger and thumb met easily around her arm); all of Lin Gyat was warm, and close. Her mind reeled again—perhaps it was that sudden perception of warmth, perhaps vertigo, perhaps merely her effort and her fall catching up to her at once—but she made her legs stay straight as steel columns, rooted as mountains. She made her eyes focus, made her move them to the two (sometimes four, sometimes three) pits of slightly darker darkness that she thought were his.
“The moon is gone,” he said.
“Never,” said Datang. It did not seem the right sort of reply to such a statement, but as an indicator of her mental state, it was accurate enough.
“We are both drunk with battle-lust. Let us take our first sport in the rubble of the havoc your body has made.”
“The King’s army is about to take its first sport with the Eunuch’s engineers at gorge-lip,” said Datang. “A bloody bride-bed it shall be if fighting stalwarts tarry in shack-ruins rather than rush to rescue.”
Lin Gyat’s other hand closed around Datang’s other arm; he lifted her as he might a kitten, holding her eyes level with his. “I care not for machinists, nor the engines on which they spend the caresses that women spurn. Come, disrobe and my technique will make you shake the very stars from the firmament for howling.”
Datang looked Lin Gyat in the eyes and did her best to keep her gaze steady, though it strove to wander. She moved her tongue as though through wool to form language that was plain and clear. “Moon or no moon,” she said, “I’ll not play brood-mare to you.”
“Just as well,” said Lin Gyat. “The Python of Degyen has no taste for horseflesh.” But his grip did not slacken.
“Our allies die while we tarry.”
“They took us at gunpoint. Let them die.”
“They have the Eager Edge.”
“He is wooden now; he and the Python have that in common.”
Datang lashed a boot-toe at said serpent, but Lin Gyat’s arms were too long; she could not reach it. “Wouldst at a stroke abandon allies and abuse a friend? And for what, a moment’ s pleasure? Your deity will not look gently on such concentrated trespass.”
Lin Gyat smiled broadly, but his eyes held all the chill of stone. “Heaven has never stinted to despise me. Let him look.” His elbows bent; he drew her close.
She waited until she could not anymore, then swung her bootheels up to his chest and applied all the force she could muster in the Crane’s Migration Step.
Again, the drama of the true scene falls short: We might hope for a bursting apart, the force of Datang’s redirected leap sending the two comrades (or enemies) through opposite walls of the miserable hut, perhaps even a shower of blood as one or more limbs was rent from torso. But, in the circumstances, it was impossible for Datang to channel all the necessary rlung in the correct direction, and in any case, Lin Gyat’s grip was enormously strong; and thus, the visual drama of such unnatural force applied against such immense strength was subtle at best. Datang felt a great pain in her arms and shoulders, and heard a pop; and, although the kick itself was not strong enough to wrest her from Lin Gyat’s grip, he nonetheless howled and dropped her to the floor, where she landed on her back and stayed for an awful, paralyzed second, the breath knocked from her lungs.
When she leapt to her feet, Lin Gyat was staring at her, hurt. “You have dislocated my shoulder,” he said sullenly.
“A shame,” she said. “I had thought to separate it, and beat you about the face with your own arm until you came to your senses. Even deprived of that privilege, though, I am gratified with the outcome, for I do not think you will violate me one-handed.”
“I shall not lay hands on you again,” said Lin Gyat, “save in defense of your well-being.”
Datang held his eyes a moment, then two. She was unused to looking down
on Lin Gyat; his upward stare made his eyes seem larger than they were. It gave him the appearance, at least, of a child’s openness, a child’s need for approbation.
“Must I clarify further?” he asked.
“No,” said Datang. “I was merely giving you the opportunity to engage in whatever lewd buffoonery it might have possessed you to extrude as chaser to an unobjectionable sentiment.”
Lin Gyat spread his immense hands. “Of lewdness, I have none at present, nor buffoonery either.”
“A late assurance,” Datang said, “and partial—”
“I expect nothing of it,” Lin Gyat said quietly. “But an assurance seemed called for.”
A menagerie of barbs presented themselves for Datang’s consideration and use: contumelies on Lin Gyat’s trustworthiness, on his injured state, on his hell-tainted character. Each echoed in her mind’s ear; each landed, accurate, pin-sharp, and richly earned; but each rang, somehow, hollow.
She walked up to Lin Gyat, took his arm and shoulder in her hands, and wrenched the former back into place, provoking another howl. “I should have killed you. But there is battle to be done, and your oafish fists may yet improve its course.”
She did not wait for the giant to regain his feet, but exited the hut and resumed her path toward the Gorge. If she was shaking as she leapt, well, perhaps it was the chill of the night air; and if her eyes stung, well, perhaps it was that air’s rush over her face, or the sinking in her heart as she saw that battle had been joined.
One of the engines had been lowered past the Gorge’s lip, though how far, Datang could not see; another still sat by the edge, though a detachment of the King’s men were rocking it back and forth, trying to push it in. They worked unmolested; machinists and fighters both were occupied by the Demon Guards and soldiers working their way through to the block and tackles, to complete the destruction of the engines by dismantling the scaffolds. “Cerulean! Cerulean and Gyaltsen!” Datang cried, so that the group fighting the Eunuch’s men would turn to face her as she leapt. Lin Gyat echoed the call not far behind her.
Datang concentrated on occupying the Demon Guards, who were best-armored and best-trained; soon their bayonets sought no blood but hers. One left off the attack to take a shot at Lin Gyat, but Datang caught him under the arm, in the gap between pauldron and breastplate, and the shot hit only earth as he fell. The force of Lin Gyat’s charge threw one Demon Guard to the ground, and a left-handed strike of his club felled another. It was a moment’s work to finish the last, and then the two fellow-armsmen hit the soldiers like a whirlwind.
For a moment, Datang thought they might rout the King’s men. Their commanders were down, killed at unbelievable speed; the royal soldiers were now both endangered and without direction. But she heard the other earth-moving engine cease to rock, and had to leap to avoid a rear strike from the detachment, which had rejoined the main battle. Lin Gyat managed to maneuver himself free as well, and now the King’s soldiers were surrounded, after a fashion—but several machinists and a Green Morning brother lay dead already, and the King’s men were beginning to spread out to threaten Datang’s flanks.
Then heat bathed Datang, and the night went white.
She leapt backward by instinct, managing to keep her feet on landing. The air teemed with the iron tang of a coming storm, but a thousand times stronger, and alloyed with the plain smoke of burning wood. The heat licked at her again, and her vision, just starting to return, again drowned in utter white. There was a crash, then another—the scaffolded engine, it must have been, bouncing on the rocks.
FOES OF THE ORCHID THRONE, said a voice like a hurricane, YIELD AND SUBMIT.
The wish to open her hand washed over her, loosening her grip for no more than a moment. She did not hear the clatter of any other weapon on the ground—the Diamond Word had been spread too thin. Likely none of the Iron Eunuch’s men had felt any more compulsion than she. But, then, she had felt what she had felt, and knew what she knew—to wit, that in all likelihood, she now stood directly against the King of Uä—and, like every other combatant, she had ceased, at least for a moment, to fight.
Color trickled back to Datang’s eyes, although there was not much to be had from the machinists’ furtive torches. Already, the King’s men had drawn back; the Eunuch’s men, for their part, were spreading out along the edge, some evidently preparing to make the leap down to the gorge-side path should hostilities resume.
“Come, Kandro,” a steel voice rang from behind the King. “I’ll see you earn the King’s authority before again you claim it.”
The King turned; the Demon Guards flanking him now closed ranks between him and the figure sauntering down from the town, carrying an eight-foot iron staff across his shoulders like a yoke. “Is this the Iron Eunuch?” he asked, deliberately modulating his voice so the fighters gathered at the gorge’s lip could hear.
“History will style me Iron Tenshing if I have my preference,” said the Eunuch. “But that is neither here nor there. Have we not played enough this night? I ask two things of you, which collectively cost you nothing. Grant me the key to the Worm’s lair, and remove your men to the border of the town.”
“I am disinclined to grant the wishes of usurpers,” said the King.
“If I am a usurper, then by granting my wish, you let the Worm disencumber you of me. If not…” The Eunuch shrugged. “Well, if not, I comprehend your reluctance, but you realize it can hardly be borne.” At this Datang detected a small shift in the postures of the King’s men: A transfer of weight from foot to foot; hands loosening on, then regripping, hafts and hilts.
“You are a usurper,” said the King. “There is no ‘if.’ The Gracious Regent himself endorsed my bid for the throne, once the evidence was before him.”
“The first line of defense for the King’s claim ought not be the word of an old usurper,” rang a voice across the field of battle, “however handsome and well-regarded he may have been.”
This voice came from the lip of the gorge. The black-clad figure was barely visible in the feeble torchlight; but there was no mistaking the straight back, the shock of horrifying hair. Netten lifted himself into the air with all the ease and delicacy of standing on a stool; he landed between them with no more impact than a cat.
“Nor his last,” Netten continued. “Your Grace, I comprehend your reluctance in this matter. The Iron Eunuch has wrought untold damage on our land and people, and his claim is self-evidently deranged.” Here Netten gave a small nod in the Eunuch’s direction. “Please forgive my directness.”
“Think nothing of it,” said the Eunuch. “I’ll wait until the Throne is mine to have you killed. Perhaps I’ll pardon you in any case.”
“Thank you,” said Netten. “Yet, Your Grace—you are unprepared for the battle that awaits.”
“White Tenshing was unprepared,” said the King.
“White Tenshing gave a great boon to Uä,” said Netten, “but he did not win.”
“I will not let an upstart fight a King’s battle,” said the King. “And if I must slay him myself to prevent it, well, I would as soon not delay.”
“Upstart he is,” said Netten, “and deranged. But, for all that, he wishes to win the day as much as we do, Your Grace; and for all that, he is puissant. He will fight stalwartly and well, and who knows? Perhaps he will bring it through where we could not.”
Lin Yongten was not present; Lin Gyat, it seemed, had lost all interest in the proceedings, massaging his shoulder and looking out into the unspangled blackness of the sky. There was no one on the field who knew Netten as well as Datang did, she was sure—no one who could detect, even from a great distance, the small slump in the shoulders, the slight questioning intonation that accompanied Netten’s utterance of “win the day.” Datang shivered; like Lin Gyat, she turned her eyes to the vast dark of the firmament.
“Did I correctly perceive,” the King asked, “that you referred to the combatants in this future contest as ‘we’?”
�
�Ah, yes,” said Netten. “I trained my whole life for this fight, Your Grace. I cannot miss it.”
Here the King did something that nearly shocked Datang out of her despond—he strode over to Netten and put a hand on the black-clad fighter’s shoulder, leaning toward him with a great and painful sincerity. “Come, man,” he said. “You have children. Do not throw your life away.”
“That cast was made before either of us was born,” said Netten, “and the nature of my role in a family is not to be much missed when I am gone. And you, I think, will not refuse my companionship, not if I offer it once more. Which I do.”
“I find these terms satisfactory,” the Iron Eunuch interrupted, and Datang could not help but feel a sense of a small boy, speaking out of turn to remind his betters of his presence. The three men—King, ex-King, and would-be King—examined one another for a moment, then another. As one, they nodded.
Datang looked down the slope to the King’s soldiers and the Eunuch’s men, each tending to their wounded now, but still maintaining readiness. “May we put up our arms?” she called, the Gorge catching and throwing back her question.
The King looked to the Eunuch and said something Datang could not make out; the Eunuch nodded. The King looked down the slope and called out, “Put up your arms and withdraw your wounded from the field. Hostilities have ceased.”
For a moment, it seemed as though neither soldiers nor machinists would do it. With a flourish, Datang snapped her straightsword into its scabbard and walked over to the Demon Guards she and Lin Gyat had felled not minutes prior, kneeling over them to take one man’s pulse, her back pointedly unguarded. She felt the eyes on her; she heard the scrape and rustle of weapons leaving hands for belts and baldrics.