by R. F. Kuang
“What about the Phoenix?”
Jiang stopped walking. “Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.”
“The god of the Speerlies,” said Rin. “Each time it has been called, it has answered. If we could just . . .”
Jiang looked pained. “You know what happened to the Speerlies.”
“But they were channeling fire long before the Second Poppy War! They practiced shamanism for centuries! The power—”
“The power would consume you,” Jiang said harshly. “That’s what fire does. Why do you think the Speerlies never won back their freedom? You’d think a race like that wouldn’t have remained subordinate for long. They would have conquered all of Nikan, if their power were sustainable. How come they never revolted against the Empire? The fire killed them, Rin, just as it empowered them. It drove them mad, it robbed them of their ability to think for themselves, until all they knew to do was fight and destroy as they had been ordered. The Speerlies were obsessed with their own power, and as long as the Emperor gave them free license to run rampant with their bloodlust, there was very little they cared about. The Speerlies were collectively deluded. They called the fire, yes, but they are hardly worth emulating. The Red Emperor was cruel and ruthless, but even he had the good sense never to train shamans in his Militia, outside of the Speerlies. Treating the gods as weapons only ever spells death.”
“We’re at war! We might die anyway. So maybe calling the gods gives us a fighting chance. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“You’re so young,” he said softly. “You have no idea.”
After that, Rin saw neither hide nor hair of Jiang on campus at all. Rin knew he was deliberately avoiding her, as he had before her Trials, as he did whenever he didn’t want to have a conversation. She found this incredibly frustrating.
You’re so young.
That was even more frustrating.
She wasn’t so young that she didn’t know her country was at war. Not so young that she hadn’t been tasked to defend it.
Children ceased to be children when you put a sword in their hands. When you taught them to fight a war, then you armed them and put them on the front lines, they were not children anymore. They were soldiers.
Sinegard’s time was running out. Scouts reported daily that the Federation force was almost on their doorstep.
Rin couldn’t sleep, though she desperately needed to. Each time she closed her eyes, anxiety crushed her like an avalanche. During the day her head swam with exhaustion and her eyes burned, yet she could not calm herself enough to rest. She tried meditating, but terror plagued her mind; her heart raced and her breath contracted with fear.
At night, when she lay alone in the darkness, she heard over and over the call of the Phoenix. It plagued her dreams, whispered seductively to her from the other realm. The temptation was so great that it nearly drove her mad.
I will keep you sane, Jiang had promised.
But he had not kept her sane. He had shown her a great power, a tantalizingly wonderful power strong enough to protect her city and country, and then he had forbidden her from accessing it.
Rin obeyed, because he was her master, and the allegiance between master and apprentice still meant something, even in times of war.
But that didn’t stop her from going into his garden when she knew he was not on campus, and shoving several handfuls of poppy seeds in her front pocket.
Chapter 11
When the main column of the Federation Armed Forces marched on Sinegard, they did not attempt to conceal their arrival. They did not need to. Sinegard knew already that they were coming, and the terror the Federation inflicted gave them a far greater strategic advantage than the element of surprise. They advanced in three columns, marching from every direction but the west, where Sinegard was backed by the Wudang Mountains. They forged forward with massive crimson banners flying overhead, illuminated by raised torches.
For Ryohai, the banners read. For the Emperor.
In his Principles of War, the great military theorist Sunzi had warned against attacking an enemy that occupied the higher ground. The target above held the advantage of surveillance and would not need to tire out their troops by climbing uphill.
The Federation invasion strategy was a giant fuck you to Sunzi.
To storm Sinegard from higher ground would have required a detour up the Wudang Mountains, which would have delayed the Federation assault by almost an entire week. The Federation would not give Sinegard a week. The Federation had the weapons and the numbers to take Sinegard from below.
From her vantage point high on the southern city wall, Rin watched the Federation force approach like a great fiery snake winding its way through the valley, encircling Sinegard to crush and swallow it. She saw it coming, and she trembled.
I want to hide. I want someone to tell me I’m going to be safe, that this is just a joke, a bad dream.
In that moment she realized that all this time she had been playing at being a soldier, playing at bravery.
But now, on the eve of the battle, she could not pretend anymore.
Fear bubbled in the back of her throat, so thick and tangible that she almost choked on it. Fear made her fingers tremble violently so that she almost dropped her sword. Fear made her forget how to breathe. She had to force air into her lungs, close her eyes, and count to herself as she inhaled and exhaled. Fear made her dizzy and nauseated, made her want to vomit over the side of the wall.
It’s just a physiological reaction, she told herself. It’s just in your mind. You can control it. You can make it go away.
They had gone over this in training. They had been warned about this feeling. They were taught to control their fear, turn it to their advantage; use their adrenaline to remain alert, to ward off fatigue.
But a few days of training could not negate what her body instinctively felt, which was the imminent truth that she was going to bleed, she was going to hurt, and she was most likely going to die.
When had she last been this scared? Had she felt this paralysis, this numbing dread before she stepped into the ring with Nezha two years ago? No, she had been angry then, and proud. She had thought she was invincible. She had been looking forward to the fight, anticipating the bloodlust.
That felt stupid now. So, so stupid. War was not a game, where one fought for honor and admiration, where masters would keep her from sustaining any real harm.
War was a nightmare.
She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream and hide behind someone, behind one of the soldiers, wanted to whimper, I am scared, I want to wake up from this dream, please save me.
But no one was coming for her. No one was going to save her. There was no waking up.
“Are you all right?” Kitay asked.
“No,” she said, trembling. Her voice was a frightened squeak. “I’m scared. Kitay, we’re going to die.”
“No, we’re not,” Kitay said fiercely. “We’re going to win, and we are going to live.”
“You’ve done the math, too.” They were outnumbered three to one. “Victory is not possible.”
“You have to believe it is.” Kitay’s fingers were clenched so tightly around his sword hilt that they had turned white. “The Third will get here in time. You have to tell yourself that’s true.”
Rin swallowed hard and nodded. You were not trained to snivel and cower, she told herself. The girl from Tikany, the escaped bride who had never seen a city, would have been scared. The girl from Tikany was gone. She was a third-year apprentice of the Academy at Sinegard, she was a soldier of the Eighth Division, and she was trained to fight.
And she was not alone. She had poppy seeds in her pocket. She had a god on her side.
“Tell me when,” Kitay said. He was poised with his sword over the rope that constrained a booby trap they had set to defend the outer perimeter. Kitay had designed this trap; he would unleash it just as soon as the enemy was within range.
They were so close she could see the firelight flickeri
ng over their faces.
Kitay’s hand trembled.
“Not yet,” she whispered.
The first of the Federation battalion crossed the boundary.
“Now.”
Kitay slashed at the rope.
A rolling avalanche of logs was freed from its breaking point, pulled down by gravity to bowl straight through the main advancing force. The logs rolled chaotically, shattered limbs and crushed bone with a noise like thunder that went on and on. For a moment the rumbling of carnage was so great Rin thought they might have won the battle before it started, might have seriously crippled the advancing force. Kitay whooped hysterically over the clamor, clutching Rin to keep from falling over as the gates themselves shook.
But when the roar of the logs died down, the invaders continued to advance into Sinegard to the steady beat of war drums.
A tier above Rin and Kitay, standing at the highest precipices of the South Gate, the archers loosed a round of arrows. Most clattered uselessly against raised shields. Some found their way through the cracks, embedded their heads in the unguarded fleshy parts of soldiers’ necks. But the heavily armored Federation soldiers simply marched over the bodies of their fallen comrades, continuing their relentless assault toward the city gates.
The squadron leader shouted for another round of arrows.
It was close to pointless. There were far more soldiers than there were arrows. Sinegard’s outer defense was flimsy at best. Each of Kitay’s booby traps had been sprung, and though all but one went off beautifully, they were not enough to even dent the enemy ranks.
There was nothing to do but wait. Wait until the gate was broken, until there was a tremendous crash. Then the signal gongs were ringing, screaming to all who didn’t already know that the Federation had breached the walls. The Federation was in Sinegard.
They marched to the cacophony of cannon fire and rockets, bombarding Sinegard’s outer defenses with their siege breakers.
The gate buckled and broke under the strain.
They poured through like a swarm of ants, like a cloud of hornets; unstoppable and infinite, overwhelming in number.
We can’t win. Rin stood in a daze of despair, sword hanging by her side. What difference would it make if she fought back? It might stay her death sentence by a few seconds, maybe minutes, but at the end of the night she would be dead, her body broken and bloody on the ground, and nothing would matter . . .
This battle wasn’t like the ones in the legends, where numbers didn’t matter, where a handful of warriors like the Trifecta could flatten an entire legion. It didn’t matter how good their techniques were, it mattered how the numbers balanced.
And the Sinegardians were so badly outnumbered.
Rin’s heart sank as she watched the armored troops advance into the city, rows and columns stretching into infinity.
I’m going to die here, she realized. They’re going to slaughter all of us.
“Rin!”
Kitay shoved her hard; she stumbled against stones as an axe embedded itself in the wall where her head had been.
Its wielder jerked the axe out of the wall and swung it again toward them, but this time Rin blocked it with her sword. The impact sent adrenaline coursing through her blood.
Fear was impossible to eradicate. But so was the will to survive.
Rin ducked under the soldier’s arm and jammed her sword up through the soft groove beneath his chin, unprotected by the helmet. She cut through fat and sinew, felt the tip of her sword pierce directly through his tongue and move up past his nose to where his brain was. His carotid artery exploded over the length of steel. Blood wet her hand to the elbow. He jerked a little and fell toward her.
He’s dead, she thought numbly. I’ve killed him.
For all her combat training, Rin had never thought about what it would be like to actually take someone’s life. To sever an artery, not just feign doing so. To break a body so badly that all functions ceased, that the animation was stilled forever.
They were taught to incapacitate at the Academy. They were trained to fight against their friends. They operated within the masters’ strict rules, monitored closely to avoid injury. For all their talk and theory, they had not been trained to truly kill.
Rin thought she might feel the life leave her victim’s body. She thought she might register his death with thoughts more significant than One down, ten thousand to go. She thought she’d feel something.
She registered nothing. Just a temporary shock, then the grim realization that she needed do this again, and again, and again.
She extricated her weapon from the soldier’s jaw just as another swung a sword over her head. She rammed her sword up, blocked the blow. And parried. And thrust. And spilled blood again.
It wasn’t any easier the second time.
It seemed as if the world were filled with Federation soldiers. They all looked the same—identical helmets, identical armor. Cut one down and here comes another.
Within the melee Rin didn’t have time to think. She fought by reflex. Every action demanded a reaction. She couldn’t see Kitay anymore; he had disappeared into the sea of bodies, an ocean of clashing metal and torches.
Fighting the Federation was wholly different from fighting in the ring. She didn’t have melee practice. The enemy came from every angle, not just one, and defeating one opponent didn’t bring you any closer to winning the battle.
The Federation did not have martial arts. Their movements were blocky, studied. Their patterns were predictable. But they had practice with formations, with group combat. They moved as if they had a hive mind; coordinated actions produced by years of drilling. They were better trained. They were better equipped.
The Federation didn’t fight a graceful fight. They fought a brutal one. And they didn’t fear death. If they were hurt, they fell, and their comrades advanced over their dead bodies. They were relentless. There were so many of them.
I am going to die.
Unless. Unless.
The poppy seeds in her pocket screamed for her to swallow them. She could take them now. She could go to the Pantheon and call a god down. What did Jiang’s warnings matter, when they were all going to die regardless?
She had seen the face of the Phoenix. She knew what power was at her fingertips, if only she asked.
I can make you fearless. I can make you a legend.
She did not want to be a legend, but she wanted to stay alive. She wanted more than anything to live, consequences be damned, and if calling the Phoenix would do that for her, then so be it. Jiang’s warning meant nothing to her now, not while her countrymen and classmates were hacked to pieces beside her, not while she didn’t know if each second was going to be her last. If she was going to die, she would not die like this—small, weak, and helpless.
She had a link to a god.
She would die a shaman.
Heart hammering, she ducked behind a gated corner; for the few seconds in which nobody saw her, she jammed her hand into her pocket and dug the seeds out. She brought them to her mouth.
She hesitated.
If she swallowed the seeds but it didn’t work, she would certainly die. She could not fight drugged, dazed, and hallucinating.
A horn blasted through the air. She jerked her head up. It was a distress signal, coming from the East Gate.
But the South Gate had no troops to spare. Everywhere was a crisis zone. They were outnumbered three to one; if they lost half their troops to the East Gate, then they may as well let the Federation stroll into the city unchecked.
But Rin’s squadron had been ordered to rally if they heard the distress call. She froze, uncertain, seeds uneaten in her palm. Well, she couldn’t swallow them now—the drug needed time to take effect, and then she would be in limbo indefinitely while she probed her way to the Pantheon. And even if she could still her thoughts long enough to call the gods, she didn’t know that they would answer.
Should she stay here, hidden, and try to call a
god, or should she go to the aid of her comrades?
“Go!” Her squadron leader shouted to her over the din of battle. “Go to the gate!”
She ran.
The South Gate had been a melee. But the East Gate was a slaughter zone.
The Nikara soldiers were down. Rin raced toward their posts, but her hope died the closer she got. She couldn’t see anyone in Nikara armor still fighting. The Federation soldiers were just pouring through the gate, completely unopposed.
It was obvious now that the Federation forces had made the East Gate their main target. They had stationed three times as many troops there, had set up sophisticated siege weaponry outside the city walls. Trebuchets launched flaming pieces of debris into the unresponsive sentry towers.
She saw Niang slumped in a corner, crouched over a limp body in a Militia uniform. As Rin passed, Niang lifted her face, streaked with tears and blood. The body was Raban’s.
Rin felt as if she’d been stabbed in the gut. No—not Raban, no . . .
Something slammed against her back. She whipped around. Two Federation soldiers had crept up behind her. The first raised his sword again and slashed down. She ducked around the path of his blade and lashed out with her sword.
Metal met sinew. She was blinded by the blood streaming into her eyes; she couldn’t see what she was cutting, only felt a great tension and then release, and then the Federation soldier was at her knees howling in pain.
She stabbed downward without thinking. The howling stopped.
Then his comrade slammed his shield into her sword arm. Rin cried out and dropped her sword. The soldier kicked it away and smashed his shield at Rin’s rib cage, then pulled his sword back to deliver the finishing blow while she was down.
His sword arm faltered, then dropped. The soldier made a startled gurgling noise as he stared in disbelief at the blade protruding from his stomach.
He fell forward and lay still.
Nezha met Rin’s eyes, and then wrenched his sword out of the soldier’s back. With his other hand he flung a spare weapon at her.