The Mandate of Heaven

  From their elevated position, Hsiung could see that the streets below harboured waiting columns of Mongols. Any charge by the rebels would soon be halted by the weight of their guardsman. He glanced up nervously at the cliff walls on either side of the valley. This was the moment he had feared, the moment of decision. Could he trust his fanciful plan? So many things might go wrong. But the alternative was to crouch here while Jebe Khoja whittled his forces as a carpenter planes wood.

  ‘Tell the men to take cover where they can,’ he ordered. ‘Prepare the fire arrows. We will burn the village.’

  At first P’ao seemed inclined to argue, then he shrugged, placing fist against palm in a salute. With a grin he whispered, ‘Why not, young Hsiung? I have enjoyed being a Lieutenant, even if it was only for a few hours. Let us go out with a blaze!’

  He bowed low to the younger man.

  ‘It will work!’ whispered Hsiung fiercely, glancing round to see who overheard. ‘Just keep the Ram’s Body whole, and when you hear the trumpets, charge with all your might.’

  Lieutenant P’ao nodded and hurried off to issue orders.

  Soon afterwards, scores of fire arrows trailing smoke flew from the rebel lines, a stream of tiny meteors landing on the straw roofs of the village. Now the absence of rain turned to Hsiung’s advantage: buildings began to smoulder and catch flame, smoke drifting lazily upwards.

  Hsiung had gathered the Left and Right Horns near the base of the cliffs surrounding the village, each positioned on opposite sides of the valley. He raised his sword as a signal and Lieutenant Jin, bruised and injured by Hornets’ Nest’s maltreatment, but refusing to surrender his command, replied in the same manner.

  A hot fury filled Hsiung. If his cause and dreams were to burn he would die sword in hand and drag a hundred hated Mongols with him to Hell! At this prospect he felt the dark lights begin their dance. Yet he knew his head must be clear!

  The smoke was thickening, filling the narrow valley, obscuring the visibility of those in the village. Hsiung turned to the Left Horn, crouching with armour and weapons ready.

  ‘To the Monkey Paths!’ he cried. ‘Follow me!’

  In a bound he scrambled onto a narrow ledge and started edging along the side of the cliff, climbing steadily until the burning rooftops were some distance below. He had no eye for anything other than the next hand and toe hold. A miscalculation would cast him onto the rocks below. Like spiders on a wall the rebels slowly traversed the cliff – no great distance, perhaps a single li, but an eternity when exposed to the bows of a thousand men milling around in the village below. Acrid smoke obscured Hsiung’s vision and he choked back tears. Even in his temporary blindness he could make out the dark hole of Fourth Hell Mouth in the centre of the village, and he had a sudden vision of its potential – so exhilarating it took all his will to hold back the dark lights. Not yet, he promised himself, but soon …

  In the village below Jebe Khoja faced a decision. Should he attack the rebels gathered at the foot of their last cliff and so escape the smoke and flames swiftly spreading around him? Or order a hasty retreat through the burning village and reform back at the palisade? Then, once the place had turned to ash, he could order a renewed advance.

  He sensed his decision must be instantaneous and longed to attack. But he had already lost too many in this campaign and was loathe to waste more.

  ‘Order a withdrawal!’ he barked at his drummers. ‘No, hold! Hold, damn you!’

  To his surprise a crude horn trumpet was sounding in the rear of his forces, then another and another, rebel trumpets if he wasn’t mistaken. He turned to confront a further surprise: Yueh Fei rebels surging down the hillside from the rear cliff in a wild charge, flags waving and halberds levelled. Jebe Khoja’s proud blood flushed at such a challenge from this rabble.

  ‘Stand and meet them!’ he bellowed.

  His best men, the guards companies, duly shuffled forward to receive the Red Turbans’ reckless attack. Instantly Jebe Khoja sensed his mistake. The village was burning more fiercely and half his army remained trapped in the flames …

  * * *

  Moments earlier Hsiung had emerged from the monkey path near the wooden palisade at the front of the camp and rejoiced to feel his boots on firm ground. More soldiers landed beside him, raising tensed crossbows or steadying pole arms. But the only enemies in view were a dozen military officials and their guards gathered round a portable map table. All were staring into the burning village like fishwives fearfully awaiting a fleet’s return from a pitiless storm.

  ‘Shh!’ urged Hsiung, ducking out of sight behind a boulder as more and more of the rebels appeared from the cover of the smoke-cloud. When enough had assembled he ordered an attack, dispatching the few enemy on this side of the village with ease. While withdrawing his sword from a man’s chest, he met Lieutenant Jin, who had successfully travelled the monkey paths on the opposite cliff with his Horn. Combined, they formed a force of nearly two hundred, the ‘bravest and best’ of the Yueh Fei cause.

  ‘Sound the trumpets!’ ordered Hsiung.

  How they rang out! Mountain trumpets made of ram horns, blown by blue-tattooed Yulai tribesmen.

  On the other side of the village, Jebe Khoja felt panic sweep his troops. The very air was barbed with sparks, floating, smouldering wisps of straw. He turned to find his drummers, all picked, seasoned men, crouching in fear, staring round at the fog of smoke through which rebels occasionally darted to stab at the heavily armoured Guards.

  ‘Sound a withdrawal!’ he called.

  Slowly at first, then with desperate passion, the signal drums beat out: boom dum boom … And what should have been an orderly withdrawal became a terrified rout through lanes choked with fume and flame. Where men encountered the hungry lips of Fourth Hell Mouth they toppled over, pushed by the weight of those who came behind, spinning and screaming into the void below. Others, more resourceful, sought the cliff walls and used them as a guide through the smoke. Still more charged down the narrow alleys like maddened beasts gasping for air.

  Because the village was not large, it did not take long to emerge from the smoke clouds in ones and twos, then tens and scores. If Hsiung’s ‘bravest and best’ had not been waiting for them, assuredly they would have lain on the ground gasping until fresh air filled their lungs, and their eyes ceased to weep. As it was, they emerged like deer driven through thickets onto hunters’ spears. The sudden flash then agony of arrows greeted them. Those who survived the arrows were cut down by swords and halberds.

  But not all. Stray groups of coughing soldiers broke through and fled up the valley while Hsiung’s Horns were busy elsewhere with their pitiless work. Amongst them were five wretches in rags, evidently escaped prisoners, or perhaps Hornets’ Nest’s servants, for one was female, though she ran with the same desperate determination as the men.

  Thicker and thicker billowed the smoke. A heat haze gathered, making the air shimmer and distances distort. The need to breathe whipped more waves of men forward, only to emerge on a shoreline of corpses littering the ground. A few stumbled back the way they had come, colliding with dozens more seeking a way out of the cloud.

  Hsiung strode up and down the ranks, goading on his men to more efficient acts of slaughter, occasionally cutting down a Mongol or Chinese mercenary.

  Finally, like the swallows who streamed each night into Hornets’ Nest’s cave, the flow of men slowed and ceased. Hsiung turned to locate Lieutenant Jin. He was leaning on a spear, exhausted by his injuries at their former chief’s hands. Could all the enemy be dead? Hsiung heard distant sounds of fighting from the rear of the village: proof P’ao was still leading the Ram’s Body.

  He stepped out of the rebel ranks, over to a boy who lay shivering on the ground. Was he barbarian or Chinese? One could hardly tell from his appearance. Hsiung leaned over the sobbing child. How old was he? Eleven, twelve? A useless boy dragged where he did not belong … Hsiung recalled himself as a boy of twelve, staring fearfully up as Overseer
Pi-tou raised his whip. He gasped, stepped back from the harmless child.

  At that moment a group of coughing, limping Guardsmen emerged from the smoke. Some had abandoned their weapons. Those who still bore arms were barely capable of raising them. In their midst was a wounded man in noble, splendid armour, his silver and gold helmet askew, its blue plume scorched and soot-grey. Hsiung sensed crossbows and bows levelling behind him.

  ‘No!’ he cried. ‘Do not loose!’

  The roar of flames in the burning village almost drowned his words. Otherwise all was quiet apart from the cough and retch of the Mongols. Hsiung knew there was no question of surrender. Such a disgrace for Jebe Khoja’s bodyguard would be worse than death, both for themselves and their families. And the Mongol nobleman, though he had to be held upright because an arrow protruded from his chest, still clutched his sword.

  Hsiung walked closer to the group and examined the injured man. His gaze found Jebe Khoja’s face, puckered by pain. As soon as the Mongol became aware of his enemy, he smoothed his features into the barbarians’ notorious ‘cold face’, though the pain of his wound must have been unbearable. Hsiung bowed stiffly and pointed with his sword at the still smouldering gates. Why did he spare so notable an enemy? He attempted no explanation. Except perhaps, that a forgotten memory lingered in some corner of his soul of gawping as a boy at the Mongol noble on his prancing charger, and of longing to be like him.

  Slowly Jebe Khoja and his entourage limped through the broken gates and up the valley. Many of the Yueh Fei soldiers who had suffered at Mongol hands muttered at this clemency.

  ‘Do not kill all those who escape from now on,’ ordered Hsiung in a tired voice. ‘If they are Chinese give them a choice: join us or die. If they are Mongol, execute them.’

  He found a boulder to sit on, the same rock from which he had addressed the troops hours earlier, and watched the herding and beheading of two hundred or so survivors. At last the flames in the village died back and, as the smoke cleared, Hsiung looked up at the dark entrance to Hornets’ Nest’s cave high above. Despite the swirling heat haze he spotted dark shapes and knew the rebel chief was returning his scrutiny, looking this way and that to discover what had happened beneath the smoke’s cover.

  Fifteen

  The freedom to fight and be killed may seem unenviable. For Teng and Shensi, resting against a rough wall in constant darkness, it lay beyond envy. Droplets bitter with minerals fell constantly from the ceiling: their only drink. Air their only grain.

  The long room echoed with moans and shuffles, cries of distress from the other prisoners. Their numbers had swollen during the night and Teng had noticed females among the new inmates. The soldiers had held their lamps high as they shoved the shadowy, cringing forms into the cavern. Then the door, a rectangle of bamboo poles lashed with wire, grated shut. Its huge rusty padlock had been fastened and checked before the soldiers withdrew up the dark tunnel. Yet sounds still reached them from outside and a few hours later Teng stirred uneasily.

  ‘I believe they’re fighting out there,’ he whispered. There had been an explosion. Shouts. Faint tinkles suggested clashes of steel.

  When sight is denied other senses take its place. Teng had already habituated himself to the stench of unwashed bodies, urine and diarrhoea; so much so, he could pick out less obvious odours. Up to now they had consisted of diseased breaths. Not long after the sounds of fighting ceased he detected something new.

  ‘Burning wood and grass,’ he mused, ‘drifting in from outside. A hut on fire. But who’s fighting who?’

  Perhaps the rebels were quarrelling over their spoils from the Prince’s tomb. A notion that gratified Shensi so profoundly he felt moved to describe Hornets’ Nest’s parentage in some detail. Teng sensed other prisoners listening to their conversation.

  ‘There are many precedents,’ he pondered. ‘Take the conflict of Zhao Gao and Li Si. One might call that a squabble over looted treasure, for all their pretensions to possess the Mandate of Heaven.’

  He might have elaborated on these learned matters had not the smell of smoke intensified. Soon people were coughing rather than moaning.

  ‘Quiet, Teng!’ commanded Shensi. ‘Come with me to the entrance.’

  They picked a cautious route across the cell, avoiding prone bodies wherever possible. Teng had no such luck with a pile of human dung in a drainage runnel carved into the stone floor.

  At the door they halted. Reaching through gaps between the lashed bamboo poles, they rattled the padlock uselessly until it became clear they were not alone. Three others had followed them, no doubt with the same aim of testing their only means of escape. In the feeble light Teng detected a familiar profile.

  ‘Tell me, sir,’ he said, cautiously, ‘weren’t you our fellow prisoner at a certain tomb near Mirror Lake? In short, aren’t you one of the Yulai hunters with blue cheeks?’

  ‘Yes, we’re Yulai,’ came the terse reply. ‘I remember you, scholar. Also from the inn at Ou-Fang Village.’

  Then it came back to Teng. He and Shensi had prevented Chao from beating this same Yulai.

  ‘We are allies,’ he suggested. ‘Well then, how are we to escape?’

  A crashing echoed down the shadowy corridor that led outside. A wounded Mongol warrior stumbled into sight, coughing, coughing as though his lungs would burst. He staggered to the bamboo door and clung to it, gasping the foul air.

  Instantly, the two Yulai seized his arms through narrow gaps between the poles, crying, ‘His knife! Get his knife, scholar!’

  Teng did not move. ‘Is that wise?’

  He was brutally thrust aside by Shensi.

  ‘Quicker!’ urged the Yulai.

  Shensi needed no encouragement: fumbling wildly, he drew the unfortunate soldier’s own dagger, stabbing and twisting the blade until the man went limp.

  Stunned silence in the long cell. Then a fearful, incoherent clamour filled the air.

  ‘Can you break the lock?’ demanded the Yulai.

  His question was addressed to Shensi, who had knelt by the huge, ancient padlock, using the dagger’s point as a lock pick. For a long while none of the men round the door spoke or moved. Everything depended on this. Teng grew aware the Yulai had another, as yet silent, companion and felt an odd frisson. Something about the stranger – who hung back in the darkness – disturbed him. He could not explain why.

  ‘Damn you!’ grunted Shensi.

  Something deep in the mechanism snapped. The padlock opened with a creak. Gently, Shensi pushed the door right back.

  They wasted no more time. Dangerous as it might be outside, better to risk anything rather than stay in that noxious trap. Creeping up the tunnel, the group turned a sharp bend. Daylight spilt over the stone floor, the sweet, intoxicating, mid-morning sunshine of a fine summer’s day. Except that the light glowed in waves, intermittently darkened by dense smoke. Teng exhaled deeply and clenched his fists, rubbing them against his eyes. The sun, obscured as it was, blinded him with hope.

  When he could see clearly, he was confronted by a stranger’s face. For a long moment he examined the young woman’s nose, eyebrows, chin. Her naturally plump cheeks. Above all her eyes were familiar, though he did not remember such an angry, even disdainful, fire in them. Surely she was a delusion sent by a mocking demon, one he had angered when disturbing the Prince’s tomb.

  He turned to the two Yulai. They were looking at the young woman with signs of respect. Teng noticed she wore a Nun of Serene Perfection’s blue robes and yellow neckerchief. A name escaped as an involuntary, astounded squeak. ‘Yun Shu?’

  She met his eye. Looked away, hugging herself. He remembered the gesture only too well. A glance at the size of her feet settled the question.

  ‘Let’s not delay,’ muttered Shensi.

  They followed his lead. Although the world outside the prison entrance was a fog of choking smoke, Shensi scurried along the side of the cliff until they emerged at the perimeter of the rebel village. The sight greetin
g them was enough to persuade the prisoners to turn back.

  A savage melee was taking place in the gap between the palisade gates and the huts. Teng shrank from the slaughter, but could not help staring. So this was war! No wonder Grandfather had preferred policy. A hand gripped his arm and they were running like hares through morning mist, up onto the wood and earth ramparts, lowering each other down. No one tried to stop them.

  Now they stumbled up the valley, away from Fourth Hell Mouth and the wrecked rebel camp, alongside other refugees in uniforms that Teng recognised as belonging to government forces. The Yulai hunter spotted a deer trail into seemingly impassable hills. ‘Up this way!’ he called. ‘Quicker!’

  They had advanced a short way along the path, which steadily widened, when a group of twenty soldiers blocked their route, escorting a man upon a mountain ass.

  ‘Out of their way!’ commanded Shensi.

  Just in time. The soldiers panted past, ignoring the refugees who crouched in the undergrowth. Teng caught a glimpse of an exceptionally fat man on the donkey, an anxious expression tightening meaty jowls, then they were past, heading for the rebel camp.

  ‘Come!’ urged the Yulai. ‘We must be far away before dusk.’

  ‘Do not!’ urged Lieutenant P’ao.

  ‘No!’ echoed Lieutenant Jin. ‘No!’

  Hsiung’s demeanour remained implacable.

  ‘He will shoot you down with arrows,’ warned P’ao.

  ‘Do not trust him!’ added Jin.

  ‘Did we suffer to allow you to throw away your life – and ours with it?’

  P’ao seemed genuinely distressed, and well he might. Hsiung, however, saw no other way. The fires in the village were dying down to reveal blackened, smouldering timbers, ash and scorched humps that had once been upright men. He could not expect his forces to stand at arms for much longer: they deserved rest, the release of celebration. With the destruction of their homes all supplies had perished. Hsiung knew he must lead what remained of the rebels to the Min River in search of food and shelter. Yet to do so would leave Hornets’ Nest safe in his cave, sat upon the treasure Hsiung desperately needed to re-equip the army and encourage new recruits.