All the doubts, all the crippling uncertainties, rose up and threatened to choke her. “I…uh…”
“Go with your gut, Cassie.” His eyes held hers, steady, sure. “I trust your instincts.”
She knew then that she’d fallen for this man, and fallen hard. Whatever happened, whatever they found or didn’t find, his unquestioning belief in her healed the last ragged hole in her heart.
“It’s going to happen,” she said with absolute conviction. “Maybe not today or tomorrow. But soon.”
“Then Professor Carswell sent us to exactly the right moment in history. We’ve got to get in—and out—of Qin’s tomb before the earth convulses and buries the medallion, possibly for all time.”
Yikes! This was alternate history with a vengeance. Cassie’s stomach did another drop when she remembered her first glimpse of the high, sweeping plain north of the city. It was dotted with dozens of burial mounds. Every emperor since Qin was buried somewhere in the vicinity.
“Can you find the right tomb, Max?”
“I think so. The landmarks are all different now, but I remember taking a bead on the mountains when I drove out to the Museum of the Terra-cotta Warriors. The museum sat at fifteen degrees right of the highest peak.”
Thank God for civil engineers and their fetish for precision!
Cassie flicked a quick glance at the procession, and saw that the imperial astrologer and his twelve acolytes had already passed through the gates. They were followed by the inspectors of the Bureau of Imperial Oversight and Protection of Their Most Heavenly Majesties. Cassie caught sight of Inspector Li looking their way, and ducked farther back in the shadows.
“How far off is this tomb?” she asked Max urgently.
“An hour by taxi. That makes it three, maybe four hours on horseback.” He shoved the reins into Cassie’s hands. “Here, hold the horses. We’ll need something to dig with and a flint to light torches once we get in.”
“And bring me a pair of your pants,” Cassie said urgently as he started back toward their quarters. “I can’t ride in this gown.”
“Will do. I’ll be right back.”
He dodged the tail end of the procession and disappeared. Cassie clutched their horses’ reins, trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. At any moment she expected Inspector Li or some other harried official to ride up and demand to know why she hadn’t take her place in line.
She didn’t draw a full breath until Max reappeared. He wore his wolf skin over his shoulders and held a bulging drawstring sack.
“I had Peony pack us some food and a warmer cloak for you.”
“And the pants?”
“And the pants. Let’s go.”
“Gone? Gone where!”
Peony cringed as Chief Eunuch Tai sprang out of his chair. She’d debated for more than an hour whether to inform him of Lord Bro-dai’s odd request. Fear of the eunuch had finally overcome her reluctance to report on the two who had been so kind to her. That, and the knowledge that Tai would learn of their disappearance sooner or later in any case.
“I don’t know where they went, master. Lord Bro-dai said only that he needed food and warm clothing for a journey. Then he snatched up his wolf pelt and left.”
Fury suffused the eunuch’s cheeks. In two strides he crossed the room and caught Peony by the throat.
“How much food?”
“Master!” Terrified, she beat at the hand crushing her windpipe. “Master, please!”
He lifted her off her slippered feet and shook her like a rag doll. “How much?”
“Four…dumplings,” she choked out through the searing agony. “Two cold…breasts…of hen.”
So they weren’t going far, Tai guessed. But where? And why?
The medallion!
His fist tightened convulsively. He paid no attention to the maid’s frantic clawing as certainty burst inside him.
They’d found the medallion, or at least knew where to look for it!
Rage boiled up, consuming him. If he let the medallion slip from his grasp, Lord Kentar would be relentless. At worst, Tai would be gutted like a squealing pig and left to die. At best, he would be condemned to live forever on this accursed planet. A gelding, never to mount another mare! All because this stupid little bitch didn’t come to him right away.
With a roar of pure fury, he bunched his fist, snapped her neck and threw her lifeless body against the wall.
Tai discovered moments later that he wasn’t the only one searching for the outlanders.
When he went to the outer courtyard en route to the stables, he spotted a small crowd clustered near the main gates. Sobbing pleas rose from the center of the crowd, punctuated by a sharp demand.
“Which direction did they take?”
“I didn’t see them, Inspector.”
“Again.”
There was a splash, followed by more gurgling sobs.
“Please. Please. I speak the truth.”
Tai shouldered his way into the crowd. He recognized Inspector Li of Her Majesty’s secret police and gave a grunt of approval when he saw the inspector was interrogating a gate guard. Two of Li’s minions had the guard bent backward over a mounting block, while others stood ready with iron tongs and buckets of water.
“Hear me well,” Li warned the writhing guard. “The empress was most displeased when I told her the seer and Duke Bro-dai had not joined the processional. She sent me to find out why. Now I learn they rode out shortly after we did, but no one claims to know what direction they took. They had to pass through this gate,” Li said coldly, his mouth twisting into a sneer beneath his long black mustache. “You were manning the tower above the gate. You must have seen them.”
“The procession…” the guard gasped tearfully. “The noise…The confusion…I don’t…”
“Again.”
“Aiiii!”
Ruthlessly, one of Li’s subordinates forced the tongs between the man’s jaws and spread them. Another upended a bucket. Gurgling and flailing helplessly, the guard choked under the torrent.
“Think hard,” Li said venomously, “or your next breath will be your last. The seer was riding a chestnut, Duke Bro-dai a bay.”
Tai muscled his way into the circle of torturers. “The duke might have been wearing a wolf pelt over his shoulders. Do you remember him now, guardsman?”
The inspector’s fury at the interruption turned to vicious satisfaction when the guard spat out a mouthful of water and gasped.
“Yes! Yes, I saw such a pelt.”
“Did the man wearing it have a woman with him?”
“Yes.”
“Which way did they go?”
“They…they exited the palace gate and turned west, then north. If they left the city itself, they had to pass through the Lion’s Gate.”
“You’d best hope we get word of them at the Lion’s Gate,” Li snarled. “If we do not, I will personally stake you out here in the courtyard and drive a wooden spear through your bowels.”
He turned away and strode toward his mount. When his minions leaped to follow him, Tai exerted his authority.
“You!”
He stabbed a finger at the beefiest underling. The man’s horse wasn’t up to Tai’s weight, but he didn’t have time to go to the stables for his own. He couldn’t allow Li to reach Spring Leaf before he did. Lord Kentar had promised him the red-haired witch, to mount as often as he pleased…once he recovered the damned medallion.
“I will take your horse,” Tai told the underling arrogantly.
“The devil you will.”
“I am Chief Eunuch Tai of the Lotus Court. The empress charged me with caring for the seer. I will not let her escape.”
The man looked to his boss for direction. Li met Tai’s eyes, calculating, assessing.
“You think she tries to escape?”
“I do.”
“Why? The empress looks on her with favor. Or did, until I informed her the seer and her keeper had not joined the p
rocessional.”
Tai wasn’t about to tell this sharp-nosed secret policeman about the medallion. He’d take care of Li when the time came.
“Who knows what’s in the mind of outlanders?” Impatiently, he grabbed the pommel and swung into the saddle. “We’re wasting time.”
Cassie’s certainty that disaster was only days, if not hours, away increased with every mile she and Max rode north.
The signs were subtle. Birds silent and gone to roost in the trees. A faint, acrid aroma underlying the cloying scent of the joss sticks burning in every roadside shrine and village temple. The hair that rose on the back of Cassie’s neck.
Mercifully, the road was almost free of traffic. Apparently everyone was at their local pagoda observing the rituals associated with the holy day. Cassie prayed they would finish their worship before the ground began to shake and those multitiered pagodas tumbled down around them.
“Do you recognize anything?” she asked Max when they stopped at a village well to water their horses.
Jaw tight, he scanned the plain ahead. The burial mounds seemed to stretch forever on either side. Some had elaborate temples close by so the deceased could be properly honored with offerings and prayers. Others were mere humps of earth that housed lesser mortals—wives and concubines and slaves to attend their lord in the afterlife.
Cassie racked her brain, trying to remember when the Chinese had stopped burying wives and concubines alive with their dead lord. Long before Emperor Qin, she was sure. By his time, living sacrifices had been replaced by clay figures. Hence the vast army guarding his tomb.
They were here somewhere, those thousands of silent sentinels. But where? God, what she wouldn’t give for satellite infrared imaging. Or Google. Mapquest. Anything!
“We’re close,” Max replied.
He skimmed the distant mountain peaks, dropped his line of sight and lifted it again.
“I think…It may be…”
He sounded less decisive than Cassie had ever heard him. She knew exactly how he felt. Shouldering her horse aside, she raised a hand to Max’s cheek and gave him the same assurance he’d given her.
“Go with your gut, Brody. I trust your instincts.”
“You do, huh?”
“Absolutely.”
He stared down at her for long moments before scrutinizing the peaks again. Then he angled his chin toward a distant mound.
“That one.”
“All right!”
She started to swing around, but he caught her arm and smiled down at her. “You’re a piece of work, Spring Leaf.”
She could see herself in his eyes. She saw something else, too. Something that made her soul sing before he gave her a swift, hard kiss and boosted her into the saddle.
“Remind me to tell you later that I love you,” he said as he mounted his horse.
“Huh?”
He was already turning the bay into the open field leading to the mound. Cassie scrambled to follow.
“Brody! Wait! What was that about love?”
“Later, Jones. After we figure out how to get into Emperor Qin’s tomb.”
The tremor hit while they were still half a mile or more from the mound. Not a major quake, Cassie sensed at once. Just a brief precursor to the one she knew would follow in the next hours or days.
But it was strong enough to make Max’s mount shy and hers whinny in terror. The sturdy chestnut rose up on its rear legs, pawing the air, and Cassie tumbled from the saddle. She landed hard in an unplowed field, the wind knocked out of her. The chestnut raced off while she tried to suck air back into her lungs.
“You okay?” Max shouted as he fought to control his own skittish mount.
“Yeah.”
Other than having both her dignity and her bottom bruised. Thoroughly disgusted with herself for getting thrown so easily, Cassie shoved her hair out of her eyes and pushed herself to her feet.
“Hang loose,” Max instructed, “and I’ll go after your…Hell! Watch out!”
The bay was as spooked as the chestnut. Humping and whinnying, it danced backward.
Cassie had to jump sideways to put some distance between herself and those lethal hooves. She landed in softer earth this time, thank goodness.
Or not!
That was her last thought before the ground crumbled beneath her feet and she dropped into a black, bottomless pit.
Chapter 12
The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
–Confucius
“C assie!”
“I’m okay,” she called up through the hole in the earth. Shaken by her fall, she blinked dirt out of her eyes and tried to pierce the gloom around her.
“I can’t see much,” she shouted to Max. “It’s dark as night down here. But I’m standing on some kind of a platform or something.”
“Watch out. I’m coming down.”
With a shower of dirt and small stones, Max dropped through the hole feetfirst and landed with a thud. Just enough light slanted through the opening for Cassie to see he’d brought the pouch with him. Moments later he’d drawn out his sword and wrapped a cloth tight around the tip. That done, he struck flint against stone until a spark leaped onto the cloth and set it ablaze.
The makeshift torch didn’t penetrate the darkness much farther than the light from the hole above them. But it was enough for Max to give a long, low whistle.
“Damn! You did it, woman!”
“Did what?”
“Landed smack on top of the army guarding the entrance to Emperor Qin’s tomb. Unless I miss my guess, we’re standing on the roof of the pit.”
“We can’t be! The mound you thought was his tomb is still half a mile or more away.”
“You’ll understand in a minute. Here, hold this.”
With Cassie gripping the sword hilt, Max went down on one knee and used both hands to feel the uneven surface beneath them until he found an edge. A grunt and a heave later, he’d tugged up a section of what looked like corrugated tin. It was rusted and rough on the outside and painted a deep enamel blue on the inside.
“Ugh!” Cassie wrinkled her nose as stale air gushed out, but Max stuck his head through the opening. When he popped it out again, he was wearing a wide grin.
“Yep, we’re here. Hand me the sword. I’ll go first.”
When Cassie followed him down a few moments later, her jaw dropped in sheer astonishment. She had landed between two clay archers wearing exquisitely detailed armor, right down to the decorations on their quivers. Similarly attired warriors marched in front and behind these two, their ranks stretching as far as she could see in the gloom. Each of the warriors, she saw with amazement, had different facial features and arrangements of their topknots.
She’d read about the terra-cotta warriors. Had watched video clips of them during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But seeing them up close and personal like this, with their clothing and features still painted in the original vivid colors, sucked the air right out of her lungs.
It returned in a painful gulp when she remembered how many of these figures Emperor Qin had ordered cast from clay. An estimated eight or ten thousand, only small a portion of which had been excavated back in the twenty-first century.
And they had to find the emperor’s warhorse amid this vast army before another, maybe more lethal, tremor shook the tons of earth above the blue-painted roof!
“Is this the same layout you saw during your visit?” she asked Max with a touch of desperation.
“Pretty much, except what I saw were reconstructed figures. Nothing like this.”
Frowning, he swept the torch in a wide arc.
“Do you remember General Schwarzkopf’s strategy during the first Iraqi war?”
Cassie blinked, surprised by the question. As a weather weenie, she would hardly qualify as a war planner, but even the most junior air force officers studied decisive engagements like Thermopylae and Waterloo and Stormin’ Norman’s strategy during Desert Storm.
“Sure. He called it Shock and Awe. But—Oh!”
Understanding burst like a bottle rocket. Damned if she hadn’t retained more of her military training than she’d thought.
“I remember now! Schwarzkopf said in his book that he based his strategy on ancient principles.”
Max gave her a quick grin. “Bingo.”
Basking in his approval, Cassie dredged her memory for details. “Okay, Shock and Awe utilized air strikes to soften the target, mechanized assault forces to open a breach and massive ground forces to control terrain and assure victory. What does that equate to in seventh-century Chinese warfare?”
“Ranks of archers launching massive volleys to soften the target,” Max replied without hesitation, “followed by chariots or cavalry to crash through opposing lines, and finally, foot soldiers wielding pikes and swords.”
Cassie eyed the quiver slung over the shoulder of the figure next to her. “So we’re in the front ranks, with the archers?”
“Right.”
“Where would the generals be positioned in relation to the rest of the troops?”
“Behind the archers, but ahead of the cavalry, so they can lead the charge.”
“Would the emperor be with them?”
“Qin would. He defeated the other warlords and united all China, remember? You don’t do that by relying on someone else to do your fighting for you.”
Holding the makeshift torch high, Max started down the long row between the larger-than-life-size archers. Cassie stayed right on his heels until one of the wooden poles supporting the roof gave a loud groan. The sound echoed through the vast chamber and pulled her up short.
“Max! I don’t have a good feeling about this!”
He turned back immediately. “Do we need to get out?”
She stood between brightly painted warriors, listening, feeling, sniffing the musty air. She couldn’t miss the subtle signs this time. She couldn’t! Not with Max’s life hanging in the balance.
“I think…I think there’s time yet.”
“Let’s hustle.”
Time Raiders: The Protector Page 12