by Daniel Fox
He did know; but not even shared experience could save him now, when he wanted to use it on one side of the argument and Shen wanted to use it on the other.
At first they only argued, Shen was only angry because he couldn’t go. Later, when he understood that Chung was even thinking about it—oh, then had come the fury. Hard hands, hard words; a cold back turned until Chung sought out another place to sleep.
Even then, the right word from Shen—it didn’t even need to be a kind word—would have changed his mind, in so far as he had made it up at all.
All he got was savagery, intercut with the logic that he could already use against himself, no use to him at all.
“You? You’re a messenger, not a fighter. You only know how to run.”
“Yes. They will need runners.”
“You’re Mei Feng’s runner, not the emperor’s. She’s not going; why are you?”
I’m not, not yet; I only think I should. “The emperor may be glad of me. And I do know how to fight, you taught me. I can handle a blade, even, better than before, after all this practice. I could be really useful.”
“You could be really dead. Fool.”
Then Shen took it into his head to behave as though Chung were dead already, a ghost already, to be ignored or else cursed and driven away: which only drove him into the strong grip of a decision. He would go, then. Not to be Shen, take his place, no: that would be ridiculous, it was one of the ridiculous accusations that Shen flung at his head along with bowls and stained bandages and one time a used chamber-pot. But to be himself, Chung the messenger, following his emperor and being with his friends. Fighting if he had to, for something that he thought he might believe in, if he could only pin down quite what it was.
He had actually been glad to step on the boat at last, to be committed, a part of the great invasion. Nothing he could do then but be the best soldier he could manage. He fancied himself going home with tales of glory—I saved the emperor’s life, I saved the day, I ran the message that brought the victory, we would have been lost without me—but he knew those were just fancies. Mostly he only wanted to be sure of going home.
At least he had the emperor to follow and people he knew around him, the imperial guards he had trained with in the forest. They had adopted him, he thought; he was more a pet than a colleague, but a welcome pet, a mascot for the troop.
They must have been seen from the city like a rising horizon, a darkening on the edge of vision, an encroaching storm. Not quite running except when the emperor did, they never quite caught up with the vanguard: only the signs left like a trail, bodies by the roadside now and then, blood-wet. Some of them might have been rebels, trying to delay the emperor’s men, give others more time to flee. They might have been rebels too slow to run; they might not have been rebels at all, only peasants unlucky on the day. The emperor glanced the first time, stiffened his face and hurried on. Chung tried not to look, but that was harder. The bodies danced in the corners of his eyes.
The emperor’s entourage worked hard to keep him behind the stormfront, and that not far, never far enough. He was emperor, and this was his day of vengeance, long delayed; he wanted to taste it for himself. If he couldn’t have Tunghai Wang at his sword’s point, he wanted someone at least, anyone, any rebel. And was frustrated, because the city was empty, near enough. Emptying as they watched, wherever they had sight of the river, where trails of retreating men showed on either bank.
Even the emperor could not have everything he wanted, even on his day of triumph. They chased as straightly as possible down from the ridge to the river, as fast as possible until an arrow hit the emperor’s jade mail. There was serious argument then, the sweating generals demanding that he take himself back out of danger; he resolved that by stepping quite neatly around them and running on. He would have gone alone if others hadn’t scampered to keep up, to keep ahead.
Chung ran easily enough in his wake and thought, If Shen could see me now, he wouldn’t mind so much. There’s nothing here. One arrow, what’s that? Not worth crossing the channel for …
THERE WERE more arrows, but none that came near the emperor. There was no real resistance, no barricade that had not been swept aside already, no holding out to the last man. Skirmishers on the flanks, who fired arrows from cover and flitted away before a squad could find them: nothing worse than that. Nobody, it seemed, was prepared to die for Tunghai Wang.
And here was the river, broad and full; and over there was the other arm of the imperial invasion, advancing just as fast, finding almost no one to fight.
There was no bridge, there were no boats, it was too far to shout. Still, the soldiers could wave at each other. Chung did that cheerfully, though he hardly knew anyone over there, and couldn’t see those few he could have named. Jiao should be there somewhere; if she were standing among the men on the bank she would be standing out, so she wasn’t there.
He hoped she wasn’t hurt. He hoped nobody was hurt, or as few as were hurt over here.
He hoped they could stop, now that they had the city and the river, but he had small actual hope of that. The emperor had come for a battle, and he wouldn’t be happy without one.
Besides, the running rebels had been close enough to see, from higher on the ridge. Who could resist a chase?
NOT THE emperor, that was certain.
He hadn’t stopped to wave, only to give swift commands to his trumpeters and bannermen. That done, he was setting out to run again.
“Majesty, wait!”
“For what?”
“For your own safety, and for our peace of mind.” The general bold enough to shout at his emperor was bold enough to snarl a little also. His arm came perilously close to gripping the imperial shoulder hard enough to give the imperial person a brisk shake. “Majesty, do you not see?”
“I see a clear path along the river, with my enemies retreated out of sight; I see my men eager to pursue them, on this bank as they are already on the other. I see the shadows growing shorter, good time passing. That’s what I see. Tell me, Meng Yao, what do you see?”
“I see an old godown in disrepair,” his stabbing finger pointing, “where a hundred men might lurk for exactly this, the chance to catch a fool young emperor unprotected.” His hand might have stopped a fraction short of shaking his fool young emperor, but his voice did not. “Beyond it, I see another,” that stabbing finger hard at work, “and another, and another. If I were Tunghai Wang, I would have spent a thousand men that way, because you are young and want to hunt.”
If I were Tunghai Wang, he seemed to be saying, you would be dying now, or soon now, if you were not dead already.
And he and Tunghai Wang had been colleagues, no doubt, for decades, friends perhaps, debating tactics over flasks of fiery spirits late into the night. They would know each other’s minds from a thousand battles fought in talk, a thousand games of elephant chess. He was a man to listen to, at least.
And the emperor knew it, that at least; he sighed and stood still. “If he had time,” he said—perhaps a little hopefully?—“if he could organize his men, then yes, he might have done that …”
“Majesty, Tunghai Wang has been a soldier all his life. If he only had five minutes, he could organize his men. Enough to spring a trap on his pursuers, at least, to delay us while he makes a good retreat. If that trap happens to catch the emperor, that is his luck and my failure, that I have allowed my emperor to run headlong into it.” Which he would not do, his voice and body said together, if he had to trip his emperor over and sit on him.
“Or perhaps his luck lies in knowing you are here with me and saying this, making me listen; and so he does not need to spend his men, because you will still creep cautiously from one godown to the next while he makes his getaway with all his men intact.”
The emperor wasn’t really arguing, though: only standing resentfully acquiescent while the general organized his own men to search the godowns. Not the imperial guards; they stayed grouped around the emperor,
talking to one another, talking to Chung a little.
Not talking to the emperor. This was different from the camp in the forest, where he was almost—almost!—one young man among many: where they could laugh and sweat and sleep and eat with him, where he could let slip the overlord and be more communal than regal, more human than godly, more like them than unlike.
Not here. The companionship of generals was … inhibiting, keeping comradeship as far at bay as it kept wariness close at hand. And here they had to prove themselves, they had to keep him alive or what purpose did they serve, what had the camp in the forest been for, and all that training? They were daunted by that arrow, the memory of it; and they were daunted too by the jademail shirt, which could keep them at a distance even more easily than a general did.
Its relentless shimmer was a constant reminder that this young man was not as other men, nothing after all like them. It was his birthright, his immeasurable fortune to wear an immeasurable fortune that they were forbidden even to touch. They stood back from the shirt, more than from him; so he stood on his own except for generals who had only ever seen him in terms of his throne: to be shifted their way when possible and not at all when he was stubborn, but stone either way. They wouldn’t think to talk to him, and so nobody did.
Chung couldn’t have been the only one who noticed. He did think of stepping out of line, putting himself forward, going to stand with the emperor; and of course did not, and nor did anyone else.
They watched Meng Yao and his soldiers make their way along the waterfront, from warehouse to boathouse to shabby broken warehouse. They saw gates levered open, doors kicked in. Building after building they saw men edge inside, heard voices call.
Saw a few lurking refugees herded out at swordpoint. No rebels, no resistance.
Only time passing, measured by the current in the river: how it swirled and bubbled, how it turned and backed up as the tide came in.
STILL NO rebels.
AT LAST the emperor’s impatience reached combustion, just as even his general’s caution was exhausted. The one strode forward so fast he was almost running already, so eruptively that his many escorts did have to run to catch up to him; the other waited by the roadway, bowed low, said, “Majesty. I do believe the riverfront is safe.”
“I do believe,” the emperor snarled, “that if Tunghai Wang is also safe, it will be because of this!”
No, Chung thought: of course the emperor would blame Meng Yao, but it was not the general’s fault. It was Tunghai Wang, playing them, knowing them. Knowing that they would have to search the godowns regardless, he had left them empty, saved his troops, still bought himself an hour.
No, not so long as that. Meng Yao had been swift and efficient, the tide had been on the turn, it had only seemed an hour. The sun said otherwise.
No matter. It had been long enough to infuriate the emperor; long enough to let the rebels run far out of sight.
Now he chased. Which meant that half his guard had to chase harder, to stay ahead; and Chung was a solid, ready runner. He found himself in the forefront without at all meaning to, shoulder to shoulder with men who had followed the emperor—or preceded him, like this—all the way from the Hidden City; and with men and women fresh from the jade clans, who had never been this far from their valleys and never expected to be so.
He ran with his tao drawn, as the others did, so as to be ready; unless it was simply so as to seem one of them, though he wasn’t sure whom he might be fooling. Not himself, not them, not the emperor. Not Shen. Even in his absence, not Shen.
They came past the last of the godowns, past an old wharf for a river ferry where there was no ferry, either side of the river. The road ran on, barely more than a muck track for farmers. There was nothing to be cautious for now, no buildings to alarm the general, only the inevitable paddy rising in terraces both sides of the valley—
—UNTIL THEY came around a bend in the river, and saw the bridge.
The bridge already broken, deliberately so perhaps, to stop them corresponding with the other half of the army. It was a wooden structure that arched across the water in dolphin-leaps, what were really two separate bridges from this bank and from that, meeting on a little island-rock between. At least, it should have arched in dolphin-leaps. It used to.
The leap from the island to the farther bank was gone. The bridge rose from its footings just far enough to say I was a bridge!—and then its timbers frayed into empty space, a leap that vanished, as though pressure of time and use had worn it entirely away.
Chung didn’t believe that for a moment. He believed rather in what he couldn’t see, rebels crawling among the timbers beneath, knocking out the vital pins that held its span together. The sudden fall that followed, dark and heavy lengths tumbling into the busy, hurried water.
There would be no pause here, no reunion across the water. It didn’t matter for Chung—Shen was far away, across another water altogether—but Yu Shan might have appreciated the chance. Or the emperor or his generals, for more tactical reasons; or any number of the troops, only because those were their brothers over there.
Their brothers were to be seen, massed on the bank there, waving. They were yelling too, only their words couldn’t reach so far; the waters were noisy here, squeezed either side of that island and again at the bend, high and urgent in their hurry to the sea.
There were figures to be seen on the island too; and angular shapes that were not natural, frameworks with arms that moved in sudden awkward flurries …
And now there were dark specks rising from the island, not birds but something hurled, like rocks. It was in that moment that Chung understood: those were actual living rebels on the island there, and they had machines that threw rocks, which was probably what the soldiers on the other bank had been trying to say …
Not rocks. They rose so slowly, he had time to see how unnaturally round they were: worked stones, perhaps, but there was something more. He thought flickers of light accompanied them in their flight. When they rose above the horizon of the valley wall, he was sure he saw thin trails of smoke hang behind them as they arched across the sky.
One more glance across the river, just that moment he could snatch his eyes away; beyond the gesticulating soldiers he could see stretches of the riverbank seared black. And, yes, something piled that might be bodies, burned almost to charcoal …
He opened his mouth to yell a warning, but there was no time. They had seemed so slow to climb, those dark barrels with their trailing fuses; they were suddenly in a dreadful hurry to descend, as though they wanted to outrace their own surprise.
He wasn’t the only one to understand. People were gasping, shoving, trying to scatter; but the roadway offered little space and too many bodies, while the paddy was a soft slow clinging wade, impossible to hurry through.
Chung looked back, to where some few bolder guards were pushing closer to the emperor. Shen would have done that: not so much to offer his own body’s protection, but only to be there where it mattered, at the heart of things.
Chung was too late, too slow. He looked up again and here they were, hurtling now, impossible to duck or dodge. Impossible to do anything but stare.
Down they came, smoking, fizzing. Their falling made its own noise too, like the sound of wind contained in a pipe, but Chung was sure that he heard fizzing.
ONE FELL into the river. A splash, a moment of floating—just long enough for Chung to register the baked-pot look of it—and then a swirl and a gurgle and it sank.
ONE FLEW over his head, over everyone’s head, fell into the paddy and was lost in a great eruptive splash of muddy waters.
APPARENTLY, Chung’s mind was keeping count, all unawares: two more …
ONE FELL on the road ahead.
The track might be muddy and little-used, but there was stone beneath the mud, generations of farmers building it up to take the weight of their carts and wagons. The projectile fell like a barrel, and smashed like a pot; he thought it was a pot,
that brief moment that he saw it whole. A huge pot of unglazed clay, spilling blackly across the roadway.
Spilling black fire as it seemed, as flames erupted.
Chung felt the heat even from distance, even as his counting mind thought, too far to hurt, which means three misses, which means …
ONE MORE.
ONE THAT fell behind him but not so very far behind, not far enough.
He heard its fall, he heard the soft explosion of its flame; he heard the silence first, and then the screaming.
He turned then, his body a great reluctance but he had to know.
Not the emperor, no—but close enough.
Close enough to splash.
A gout of fire clung to the emperor’s back, to his jade-scale shirt.
That was the first Chung saw, the first he looked for, the closest flame to him.
THE EMPEROR was ignoring it.
Beyond him, others were burning. Screaming. Writhing.
Roll on the ground, Chung wanted to call, but no one would hear him.
Besides, the ground was aflame, a great blaze of fire leaping up to divide the emperor and his nearmost guards from all those who came behind, those he had outrun.
Screams were cut off by splashes as those who were burning leaped over the wall into the paddy.
Those who didn’t jump were thrown in bodily, by the emperor and Yu Shan working together.
Slow to turn, slow to start moving, but when Chung did, it was with a perfect resolution.
The emperor was burning … !
The emperor was tall and solid, stronger than he looked. Hard to move. Also, weighted now with a shirt of stone.
No, Chung would not try upending him into the river. Or the paddy.
Instead he dropped his tao, bent as he ran, scooped up a double handful of wet mud.
Which he hurled onto the emperor’s back as soon as he was close enough, as close as he dared come to that flare of fury. Not close enough to slather it on by hand, he wasn’t brave enough to thrust his hands deliberately into a furnace; close enough to feel his skin tighten and his muscles flinch. How the emperor endured the heat of it so perilously close to his own skin, just the thickness of a fine stone scale away, Chung couldn’t imagine.