his depleted energies, and within moments 0f stretching out in the rice straw, Jakob slipped into a blissful, dreamless sleep, feeling utterly safe and at ease.
10
Even before he awoke, the smell of dust tickled Jakob’s nostrils. In a fleeting, confused dream he felt himself .chocking as he stumbled through one of Peking’s winter sandstorm and on waking he discovered that in reality the air all around him was filling with clouds of dry dust. Night had already fallen, and although there was a faint luminosity of moonlight in the grain store le could see very little in the shadowy blackness. Only gradually did he become aware of the chants and yells that accompanied a violent hammering on all the wooden walls of the farmhouse. Sitting up in the straw he listened carefully and recognized for the first time that a chorus of wild Chinese voices massed outside was screaming “Sha! Sha! Sha!” — “Kill! Kill! Kill!”
He scrambled to his feet, coughing and groping blindly in the darkness toward the basket where he imagined his baby daughter still lay sleeping. He realized dimly that it was the deafening, rhythmic beating on the wooden walls and shuttered windows of the farmhouse that was raising the dust. He had assumed that the ringing blows were being struck with farm implements, but as the shouting and banging became wilder he wondered fearfully if weapons of some kind were being used. In the darkness he was unable to locate the wickerwork baskets, and a feeling of panic began to well up in him; then a hand clutched at his shoulder and h swung around in alarm.
“Climb up to the rafters quickly, Ke Mu-shih! I’ve taken the panniers up there.”
Liang drew Jakob by the arm toward a ladder that leaned against a wall in one corner of the store and they scrambled up onto the heavy beams that supported the roof. Some of the beams had been boarded over and a few sacks of grain were stored on the planks. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Jakob was able to make out Liang’s two sons crouching wide-eyed with fright among the sacks and he scrambled along the rafters t squat beside the twin panniers. He leaned close to the basket in which his infant daughter was lying, but although she was awake she made no sound, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“What’s happening, Liang?” gasped Jakob. “Surely it can’t be the Red Army?”
“No, Ke Mu-shih, they must be shen ping — ‘spirit soldiers’! They’re armed with swords and spears.”
Jakob listened tensely to the growing noise: the sudden splintering of wood in another part of the building was followed by a new outbreak of screaming and shouting, and some of the voices seemed to move into the house. Again yells of “Sha! Sha! Sha!” rang out and the hammering on the walls of the grain store intensified.
“We must try to get away, Hsiao Liang! They’ll have no mercy on any of us if we’re caught.”
In his journeys through the mountain districts of southern China, Jakob had heard many tales of the armed bands of spirit soldiers whose members performed magical rites that they believed made them impervious to death. By day they were ordinary peasant farmers, but at night they gathered as secret societies to worship idols and take part in demonic rituals that ended in mass frenzy. The eating of special foods was thought to induce “spirits” to take possession of their bodies and make them immune to death by sword or bullet. Spirit soldiers were consequently fearless in the face of danger and Jakob knew that they hated outside military forces and were hostile toward all strangers who passed through their regions, believing them to be spies. Often they terrorized landlords who levied exorbitant taxes from them, but at dawn the ferocious spirit soldiers invariably hid their spears and swords and returned to work unobtrusively in the local fields. Jakob guessed that one such innocent- looking peasant must have seen the farmer offer Liang and himself sanctuary and then reported their presence to the local secret society leaders. While they slept, the local spirit soldiers had obviously been called together to perform one of their wild ceremonies before swooping on the farmhouse in a state of frenzy.
“The rafters stretch right through the house, Ke Mu-shih,” whispered Liang urgently. “Follow me!”
There was space under the caves of the house which overhung the outer walls, and by stepping from rafter to rafter bent double, Jakob was able to follow Liang to a corner of the grain store where they could see down beyond the walls into the yard. By the faint light of the rising moon, Jakob saw a seething throng of peasants hacking fiercely at the front boards and window shutters with crudely smelted broadswords. At least one of them brandished an old rifle, all were yelling dementedly, and some of the attackers appeared to be frothing at the mouth. As they watched, a surge of men erupted through the smashed front door of the farmhouse, dragging the farmer and his wife and children in their wake. Their appearance provoked a new outbreak of crazed shouting, and more spirit soldiers rushed toward the grain store and rained heavier blows at the barred double doors with their swords.
“We must try the back of the house, Hsiao Liang — it’s our only chance!”
Jakob spoke over his shoulder as he moved off along the rafters toward the rear wall, and Liang hurried to fetch the panniers and his two sons. When they reached the eaves above the back door of the farmhouse, Jakob held up his hand to halt them. Below by the light of the moon he could see a single Chinese peasant guarding the rear of the house: a burly, broad-shouldered man, he was swinging a sword around his head and shouting wildly in unison with the rest of the attackers, who swarmed around the front of the building. Beneath them Jakob heard the barred double doors of the grain store splinter with a loud crack and the screams of “Sha! Sha! Sha!” rose higher as the mob surged into the outbuilding. A single rifle shot, fired upward through the roof, rang out above the din; almost at once the mob became confused and angry at finding the grain store empty.
The burly peasant guarding the back of the house cocked his head, listening to the cries of anger and frustration. Then, unable any longer to resist joining in the attack, he raced away along the rear wall. The moment the peasant turned the corner toward the grain store, Jakob leapt outward from the rafter on which he stood and fell to the ground outside the wall. As he scrambled to his feet the contorted face of a spirit soldier appeared inside an open window of the farmhouse beside his head.
“Sha! Sha!” screamed the spirit soldier, brandishing his sword around his head.
“Sha! Sha!” yelled Jakob in an unthinking reflex response, hoping that in the near-darkness his conical hat and Chinese gown would deceive the attacker into thinking he too was a spirit soldier. In the same moment he seized the rope pulley, which held a single wooden shutter open above the unglazed window, and slammed it shut in the shrieking man’s face.
“Quick, Liang, hand me the baskets!”
Jakob reached upward toward the eaves and caught each of the panniers lowered to him in turn by the cook boy. Liang jumped down, followed by his two sons, and they dashed after Jakob, who had hoisted the carrying pole and the baskets onto his own shoulder. A high bank that bordered a terraced rice field rose behind the house and Jakob scrambled up it, intending to drop quickly out of sight into the field — but he stumbled on the rough ground and fell to his knees as he neared the top of the bank. The rear basket hit the ground heavily and inside, Abigail, shocked into full wakefulness, began wailing loudly.
Liang hurried up the steep incline to help Jakob to his feet, scooping up the carrying pole at the same time. Each of his sons steadied a basket and the four of them slithered down onto the frozen ruts of the rice field. Once they reached flat ground they ran fast toward the far bank. The baby was still shrieking with fright and behind them they heard a dog begin barking loudly. Turning to look over his shoulder, Jakob saw the first group of spirit soldiers appear on top of the bank. Waving their swords and spears above their heads, they began yelling “Sha! Sha! Sha!” in chorus as they ran down into the field behind the barking dog.
A rocky trail led up the wooded mountainside on the far side of the field, but by the time Jakob reached it, all the spirit soldiers w
ere pouring across the rutted ground in pursuit. Encumbered by the baskets, Liang had little chance of outdistancing their pursuers, and his sons were refusing to heed his repeated urgings to run ahead and hide. They clung doggedly to their father’s heels as he ran up the forest trail and Jakob saw that they would have no hope of shaking off the spirit soldiers unless they broke away into the forest. Through the trees he caught a glimpse of reflected moonlight and increased his speed to clutch breathlessly at the cook boy’s sleeve.
“Liang, the river! We must try to reach it.”
Liang and his sons turned off obediently behind him as Jakob plunged in among the firs, and he led them between the dark trunks toward the rushing water. Some of the spirit soldiers ran on screaming up the trail but others, by the dog, followed through the trees, shouting and whooping frenziedly in anticipation of running down their quarry. When Jakob emerged suddenly from the forest he found himself on the brink of a high cliff with the river foaming seventy feet below at its foot. He turned south along the cliff, running desperately, the chants of the spirit soldiers growing louder in his ears, and when he saw the tangled tendrils of a gnarled vine trailing down the cliff he grasped it in his hands and swung his legs over the cliff edge. Calling for Liang to hand him the carrying pole, Jakob balanced it across his right shoulder and began lowering himself hand over hand toward the stony riverbank. With their pursuers approaching the cliff top, Jakob swung in toward the cliff under a ledge, scrabbling for a hold with his feet, and Liang and the boys followed suit. The pannier in which his daughter lay was suspended over the river, open to the darkened sky, but the baby, seemingly exhausted by her desperate wailing, had fallen quiet, and Jakob held his breath and said a silent prayer that she would not cry out again.
Hanging out of sight beneath the ledge, Jakob and Liang listened anxiously to the voices of the yelling spirit soldiers as they charged past. They faded quickly into the distance, but some instinct warned Jakob not to move, and he signaled to Liang to stay where he was. Before long, some of their pursuers came back to the same spot above their heads on the cliff top and stayed there, talking loudly among themselves. Jakob steadied Abigail’s basket with one hand, rocking it gently to keep her from Crying, and at last the voices moved slowly away.
After waiting a minute or two to be sure, Jakob called softly to Liang to follow him and slid down the rest of the hanging vine to the riverbank. As his feet touched the ground he felt a great sense of physical relief: then rough hands seized his shoulders, spinning him around, and he found himself staring into the narrow-eyed faces of men who wore eight-sided caps. Liang and his sons were grabbed in turn as they reached the ground and one of the soldiers prodded the rear pannier on the carrying pole with his bayonet. The baby immediately began to wail again and another soldier switched on a looted flashlight and shone it directly into the basket. In the glow of its beam the red, five-pointed stars on the caps of the Red Army troops crowding in all around them became clearly visible to Jakob and Liang.
11
Keep going! Faster! Faster!”
The pock-faced Young Vanguard prodded the younger of the Liang boys between the shoulder blades with a sharpened stick, urging him up a steep bank toward the rattle of gunfire.
“Are you too cowardly to run toward the enemies of the Red Army, is that it?”
The boy hissed his words contemptuously in Little Liang’s ear as he pushed him roughly from behind once more. “Or are you only good for helping imperialist spies escape from their captors?”
Little Liang stumbled and tried to climb faster but the thick rope loosely hobbling his ankles restricted his steps, and because his hands were tied behind his back he had difficulty keeping his balance. Ten yards ahead of him his older brother was clambering clumsily up the hillside, similarly hobbled and bound. From time to time he paused to glance around at Little Liang to check on his progress, then, gazing apprehensively ahead, resumed his climb alongside the fast-jogging column of Red Army troops moving purposefully toward the sounds of battle.
“I’m not frightened,” sobbed Little Liang over his shoulders as he struggled over the rough ground. “If you’d untie my hands and feet I could run faster.”
The Young Vanguard snorted derisively. “Oh, yes, of course I’ll untie you. Then you can run screaming into the arms of your friends in Chiang Kai-shek’s stinking army as soon as we get over the next hill.”
“I wouldn’t run away, I promise,” gasped Little Liang. “I followed the Red Army with my brother for many weeks before we were taken prisoner. Whenever we watched you we wished we could join.”
“Then why did you and your father act as running dogs to a foreign spy?”
“I don’t understand about Pastor Ke being a spy. We were only doing what he told us to do — bringing his baby to him. My father was his cook boy in Chentai. He had to get a job when a greedy landlord robbed our grandfather of his land. Sometimes my -father went with Pastor Ke when he made journeys to sell books about a man he calls Yeh-su — that’s all I know.”
The Young Vanguard snorted again but before he could reply, a flurry of explosions shook the hilltop above them and a shower of rock, broken tree branches, and other debris cascaded over the hillside, forcing the hurrying troops to fling themselves flat on the narrow track. The Young Vanguard grabbed Little Liang by the shoulder and threw him to the ground behind a hump of rock, calling loudly for Big Liang to crawl back to them. The moment the older boy reached their side, another shower of stick grenades arced in the air above the hill, thrown from hidden Kuomintang positions on an overhanging bluff, and the three youngsters buried their faces in the dirt as a further hailstorm of debris showered down around them.
“What’s happened to my father, Comrade Mauser — please tell me!” As the dust settled, Little Liang rubbed the grime from his eyes and gazed pleadingly at the Young Vanguard at his side. “We haven’t seen him for three weeks.”
“Your father’s scuttling at the heels of the foreign spy, carrying his belongings,” growled the boy, raising his eyes cautiously to scan the hilltop. “That way they’re both under the noses of the guards. The magistrate had the spy flogged for escaping. . . a hundred lashes. And his hands have been tied again.”
Like all the other Little Red Devils serving as orderlies with the Red Army, the scrawny boy set to guard the Liang brothers was universally identified by a rough-humored nickname given him by the troops. In his case, the ravages of a childhood disease that had scarred his round cheeks with pockmarks had been likened through his nickname to the textured butts of the Mauser machine pistols which so many of the Communist troops had captured from the Kuomintang forces. Despite the outward scowls with which he greeted its use, Comrade Mauser, or Little Mauser, gloried secretly in this tough-sounding battle name. During their three weeks of captivity, Little Mauser had treated the sons of Jakob’s cook boy with a fierce contempt, the more so on realizing that he personally had been a victim of Big Liang’s deceit prior to Jakob’s escape. But during that time both captives had come to recognize that the use of the nickname was pleasing to Little Mauser.
“And what about Pastor Ke’s baby, comrade?” put in Big Liang quickly, taking advantage of the new confiding mood that seemed to be growing between them in the shared danger of being under fire. “Is she still alive?”
“You’re not permitted to call me ‘comrade,’ and don’t ask me questions about your fellow prisoners.” Little Mauser spoke sharply, then fell silent listening intensely to the noise of the fighting. But during a lull in the shooting, his desire to air his knowledge seemed to get the better of his resolve not to communicate. “Don’t go holding out any great hopes for the foreign spy’s baby. The woman of the Comintern adviser who travels with the General Headquarters column had a child. But although they get the best food, it’s already dying. .
All three boys buried their faces in the cold earth again as a new exchange of rifle fire broke out above them: it continued fiercely for a minute or more,
then became intermittent. Eventually Little Liang risked turning his head to look beseechingly at their captor again. “Please, Comrade Mauser, will we ever be allowed to see our father again?”
“Just think yourself lucky your father’s still alive!” A new edge of bitterness entered the Young Vanguard’s voice, raised above the sound of the gunfire. “Kuomintang soldiers beheaded my father and fifty other poor peasants — just because one of them gave a little food to a Red Army patrol. So don’t expect me to worry about when you might see your father.”
Somewhere above them a bugle call rang out and the troops all around them rose up in a rush to hurl themselves over the crest of the hill. Little Mauser listened intently to the sounds of the skirmishing for several minutes — and once he was satisfied it was safe, he prodded the two Liang boys fiercely with his stick again and urged them upward. When they stumbled over the brow of the steep hill, the three boys looked ahead and saw high, sheer walls of dark rock towering above them. For several days the name of the famous Loushan Pass had been on the lips of everyone in the marching column as they hurried toward the massive screen of mountains protecting the Kweichow-Szechuan border. The noise of battle had grown louder hour by hour while they drew nearer and it was clear that a major engagement was being fought with great tenacity. But on finally catching sight of the pass itself, the youngsters found themselves awestruck by its grandeur. The unit with which they were marching, they realized, must have been delayed by an isolated pocket of Nationalist resistance which had at last collapsed, because dense phalanxes of Red Army infantry were already visible ahead, swarming through the great cleft in the mountains, using the dirt road that commanded the north-south route. After weeks of wheeling and feinting northward toward the Yangtze to confuse and sidetrack the numerically superior government and warlord forces, the Red Army had evidently concentrated its strength successfully once more to smash another encirclement and open up an escape route for itself to the south. Although all units were exhausted from repeated night marches, it was clear to Little Mauser and his two roped captives that the entire Red Army was now moving with new purpose once more. Reinvigorated by the first strategic victory of their entire trek, the troops were shouting and strutting with an unfamiliar sense of bravado.
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