The Mandate of Heaven

  ‘Are you sure they’ll come tonight?’ asked Shensi, gloomily.

  ‘You must have a little faith,’ replied Teng. ‘Remember the letter. And, of course, their inordinate greed. Oh, they’ll come.’

  The letter in question had been found shortly after their flight from Chenglingji in Chao and Hua’s private junk. The captain, an old intimate of the spymasters, claimed to have no knowledge of the letter’s contents, just that he had been ordered to deliver it to a gentleman in Hou-ming. Conveniently, he didn’t know the gentleman’s name either. Dangling his head in the lake while Shensi held his ankles refreshed the captain’s memory. ‘Salt Minister Gui!’ he spluttered. Another dipping revealed this was one of many letters delivered to that party.

  Upon breaking the wax seal, Teng discovered the document was written in code. Ever since he was a boy, Teng had liked puzzles and ciphers and mental challenges that offered a chance to confirm his superior faculties. Common scum like Chao and Hua could never devise a code too difficult for a trained scholar. As their junk sailed towards Hou-ming, he had used every waking hour to unpick the code. Once deciphered, the letter surprised even him.

  ‘Salt Minister Gui,’ he had translated in a pedantic, triumphant voice to Shensi. ‘We have had no confirmation you received our last message. Mark that, Shensi! Their correspondence is no new thing. Clearly Chao and Hua are traitors. And no doubt Ying-ge is an accomplice. Red (yes). Blue (no). A password or signal … We will honour our offer to meet you at midnight of the 8th day, 9th month, in the house you once showed us. In case you do not arrive like last time, we mean the house below the ruins of Deng Mansions. We beg you to join us at the exact centre of the garden. Note the preciseness of their instructions. They don’t trust our dear Salt Minister and who can blame them? Clearly their business transactions have not been satisfactory! Now we come to it: Do not forget the great reward you promised us. Think how we have earned it a hundred times over. Ah, they really don’t trust him! It is signed: Ox and Snake. Little difficulty guessing who is the ox and who the snake, eh? Tell me you aren’t impressed, Shensi!’

  Teng had beamed expectantly. The former tomb-finder scowled. ‘We never got our share of the dead prince’s treasure from Chao and Hua. Now they’ll pay.’

  ‘Do you mean to blackmail them?’ asked Teng, in alarm. ‘That is not possible. We must warn Hsiung! Prince Arslan knows all about his plans. He may be sailing into a trap. Surely he will postpone his attack on Hou-ming now.’

  ‘No blackmail,’ replied Shensi.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘I mean to kill them.’

  * * *

  That was why they waited on Monkey Hat Hill at midnight of the 8th Day of the 9th Month. To kill Chao and Hua. And why the junk intended to carry Deng Nan-shi to safety had been sent back to Chenglingji with a warning for Hsiung. Teng’s hope was that it reached the rebel fleet before any trap set by the Mongols snapped shut.

  They took up position in a thicket of rhododendrons overhung by an ancient pawlonia tree. The gardens had reverted to young woodland in the twenty years since Salt Minister Gui and his household left for the security of Prince Arslan’s compound. No one except wild animals and birds came there now.

  As Teng had predicted, they did not wait long. One of the bodyguards assigned by Liu Shui appeared by their side.

  ‘They’re here,’ he murmured. ‘The two Ministers and four guards, that’s all. They carry lots of bags as though they’ve just arrived in the city and come straight here. Ministers Chao and Hua are on their way to the gardens now with a lantern. They’ve left their men at the gatehouse.’

  Teng’s breath quickened. He felt an intense discomfort in his bowels. It had been one thing to threaten revenge: securing it was quite another, especially with a sword he had never used in anger. Luckily, their own bodyguards were formidable fighters.

  ‘Are the Ministers armed?’ he asked, ashamed of the squeak in his voice.

  Shensi ignored him: ‘You three surprise the guards they left by the gatehouse. Not one must escape.’

  The rebel soldier nodded. Teng immediately detected a flaw in Shensi’s plan. ‘If our own men do that, who remains to subdue the Ministers?’ he asked.

  Again he was ignored.

  ‘Don’t attack the four guards until you hear fighting in the garden,’ said Shensi. ‘That’ll be us. Bring us their heads as proof.’

  The soldier saluted with two fists pressed together. A rustle of leaves and he vanished into the darkness to find his comrades. Shensi quietly drew his long sword and Teng did likewise. Then they froze. A light had appeared at the entrance to the garden.

  ‘Is he there?’ called out Chao in a brash, thick voice. ‘He’d better be this time!’

  Teng had seen Chao drunk so many times he could not mistake the signs. Beside him, Shensi stirred with anticipation.

  ‘Quieter, you fool!’ That was Hua.

  ‘Why?’ jeered his partner. ‘There’s nothing but mice to be afraid of here. No one can hear us.’

  ‘Even so,’ replied Hua, ‘we should be careful.’

  ‘It’s that damned lunatic Gui with his crazy little he-whore who should be careful. If he doesn’t pay us what we agreed, I’ll …’

  ‘Shut up! You should never have drunk that brandy. What if he hears.’

  They came into view, heading for the paved area in the garden’s centre overlooked by the rhododendrons where Teng and Shensi lurked. Both spies were dressed in plain travelling clothes, Chao carrying a flickering oil lamp while Hua held a bag close to his chest as though afraid of dropping it. Close up, Teng was alarmed by Chao’s broad-chested bulk. If it came to a fight he had little doubt who would triumph. At least Hua, though wiry, was small. In addition, he was out of breath from carrying the heavy bag. Teng wondered how he could arrange a brief trial of these two criminals – with himself in the role of judge, of course. He suspected Shensi had other notions of justice.

  ‘Where is he?’ demanded Chao. ‘That abacus he’s always clicking gives me the creeps. It’s like he’s counting dead souls.’

  ‘He will come.’

  ‘Why should he?’ asked Chao. ‘I told you not to give him the information before we got paid. This is your fault.’

  ‘By tomorrow we’ll be rich enough to set ourselves up as lords,’ said Hua.

  ‘So you say. Why hasn’t Gui replied to your last few letters?’

  ‘Because it was too dangerous. He chose not to take the risk.’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Chao. ‘There’s another thing you haven’t considered. What if the Noble Count wins his glorious battle tomorrow?’

  ‘Then we leave Hou-ming Province with all we’ve got off him – and that’s a lot – and set up elsewhere as wealthy merchants. So I, at least, have considered it.’

  ‘Consider this!’ The battlecry belonged to Shensi. He leaped out of the rhododendrons and brought down his sword on Chao’s shoulder while the drunken man looked round in confusion. A bellow rose into the night. The lamp swung at Shensi, forcing him to dodge. Sparks and burning oil flared. Then Chao, clutching his wound, disappeared into the darkness, shouting for help.

  ‘He’s mine!’ cried Shensi. ‘You take the other.’

  With that he was gone, leaping round a corner of the path towards the abandoned house. By now Hua had drawn his sword and stood looking for attackers. Aware all surprise had gone, Teng stepped from the concealment of the bushes.

  ‘Lesser Minister Hua,’ he said, ‘I advise you to throw aside your weapon. I promise a fair hearing, though I suspect you wouldn’t offer the same courtesy to me.’

  If he expected Hua to obey this eminently reasonable command – and he did – Teng was instantly disappointed.

  ‘Who else is with you?’

  A question answered by shouting and clashing metal at the gatehouse. The bodyguard provided by Liu Shui had pounced.

  ‘Who else is here?’ demanded Hua, staring round into the darkness, his sword arm pulled b
ack to thrust. Discovering no one, a puzzled look crossed his face.

  ‘Just me,’ said Teng. ‘Now, drop your sword.’

  Hua kept examining the undergrowth. ‘Just you?’ he asked, incredulously. ‘Then I’d advise you to drop your sword. Do you expect me to surrender to a coward?’

  He made a pretend tiger roar, just as he and Chao had amused themselves when seeking the dead prince’s tomb all those years before. Ruffled, Teng said: ‘I strongly advise …’

  ‘Shut up!’ said Hua. ‘You’re a weakling! It’s that precious Deng blood of yours. Everyone knows your grandfather hung himself instead of fighting the Mongols like a man. Well then, give me your sword like a sensible …’

  At that moment he leaped at Teng, sweeping his blade. The scholar cried out, managing to parry the blow at the last moment. Hua stepped back. With another bellow, he slashed again – a feeble stroke, inexpertly delivered. Teng’s ripostes were similarly inept. Back and forth they swung and parried, clanging and uttering ferocious grunts until, finally, both were winded and backed away. Sounds of fighting still drifted from the gatehouse, including an agonised scream that Teng thought horribly like Shensi’s voice.

  ‘One of yours, I think,’ said Hua.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Teng wondered if Hua shared his desperation for help. The spy’s earlier taunt had been correct: it was in his blood to expect others to do his fighting.

  ‘I am going to pick up my bag and walk away,’ said Hua. ‘If you follow or interfere, I’ll kill you.’

  Uncertain of his enemy’s intentions, Hua stepped cautiously over to his fat leather bag. Still Teng hesitated. It would be better to wait for one of the bodyguards. Hua laughed coarsely as he seized the bag with one hand, holding the sword in the other.

  ‘It’s like I say,’ he said, ‘you’re a coward. Just like your grandfather.’

  The insult, so often rehearsed by Teng’s deepest fears and anguished pride, or sheer weariness of being scorned by men inferior in every way except guile and an absence of scruples, forced up his sword. Teng charged at Hua. ‘Yueh Fei!’ he cried. ‘Yueh Fei!’

  Back and forth they clashed, only this time in deadly earnest. Despite his enthusiasm, Teng was clumsier than Hua. First he took a gash on his left arm, then a cut on his scalp that began to trickle blood over his forehead.

  ‘Had enough?’ gasped Hua, crimson from his exertions.

  Teng’s chest burned for air. His body, still not fully healed from the misery of the Salt Pans, felt as though it would curl into a senseless ball and beg for mercy.

  ‘Yueh Fei!’ he called, desperately, as though his great ancestor might help him. And perhaps the Immortal Hero of the Empire did watch from the Jade Emperor’s Cloud Terrace and approve his hapless descendant’s foolish courage. Teng’s next desperate sword stroke – for the first time in the entire fight – connected with an intimate part of Hua. Not his flesh, it was true, but a bulging purse attached to his broad girdle. The bag split and burst, spilling a tinkling rain of gems and pearls and gold objects onto the moss-covered paving stones.

  Hua involuntarily tried to grab his precious treasure, lowering his guard for a moment. Long enough for Teng to level his sword and drive it deep into the small man’s chest. Having delivered this blow, Teng let go of the hilt and staggered to one side, breath panting. His heart pulsed as though it would split and burst like Hua’s bag of treasure.

  ‘Y-you!’ gurgled Hua, blood bubbling up from his punctured lung. He dropped his own sword and vainly attempted to grip Teng’s. Slowly he toppled forwards, driving the hilt deeper in. After a last twitch he lay motionless.

  At that moment Shensi arrived, followed by two of the bodyguards assigned by Liu Shui. The old tomb-finder surveyed the scene coldly. Blood trickled from Teng’s wounded scalp, dripping onto the ground where jewels and gold objects lay scattered.

  The corpses of the four guards and Minister Hua were thrown off the cliff into the lake below. The body of their own man – for one of the rebels had perished in the fight – required more honour. As the first beams of dawn filtered through the young woods surrounding the Salt Minister’s old house, they dug a shallow grave and left him to rest.

  Chao had managed to escape yet they did not think he would return soon.

  ‘He’ll wait for the end of the curfew,’ said Shensi, ‘it’s too dangerous otherwise. Besides, he’s badly wounded. We’ve time to set things in order.’

  This included a thorough search of the bodies before throwing them over the cliff. Once opened, the baggage contained a fortune in cash, jewellery and silver ingots bearing the Imperial treasury’s seal of authenticity.

  Among the valuables, too, a gold and bronze leopard with red jewels for eyes. A treasure found in the dead prince’s tomb a decade earlier and somehow filched from Hornets’ Nest. Teng remembered Hua’s deep fear of curses. Perhaps that curse had worked itself out.

  For the first time in all the years he had known him, Teng saw tears on Shensi’s grizzled cheeks. ‘At last,’ sniffed the tomb-finder, ‘something! This time I’ll not lose it!’

  ‘We must go now to Cloud Abode Monastery,’ said Teng. ‘I must find my father before Chao informs Salt Minister Gui what has happened.’

  With that, as dawn seeped a faint trace of light to the east, the four surviving rebels climbed the Hundred Stairs towards the monastery, bags of loot on their backs.

  Thirty-three

  6th Day, 9th Month, 1322

  Dawn, three days before Teng was to attain the unlikely exploit of killing a man. Far out on the lake where the water was deep as forty people standing on each other’s shoulders, down through drifting clouds of sediment and vegetation to the lake’s bed, fish of many kinds were feeding. They had discovered a banquet.

  The remains of a burned junk rested on the muddy, rock-strewn bottom, half-hidden by gently swaying weeds. Its mainmast had snapped and projected at an angle. The hull, split open by a gigantic crossbow bolt, showed signs of charring. Weapons lay within the wreck, as well as diverse objects to maintain a floating house. None were useful to the fish and crabs and eels. As dawn light filtered through the cloudy water, nocturnal feeders worked furiously, aware the coming of day would bring more powerful eyes and jaws.

  The junk had been sunk the previous evening after a chase by paddlewheel destroyers from the government fleet. A few lucky hits by bomb-hurling catapults set her ablaze. She had drifted down slowly, along with her secrets.

  The greatest of these had resided in the hearts and minds of the junk’s crew: memories and flickering, earnest convictions balanced by doubt. All gone, treasures uncountable. Now long-jawed fish sought what profit they could from flesh and bone and blood and sinew that had encased those treasures. Eels entered gaping mouths to find tongues that once laughed or cursed, told truth and lies. Soft, spongy meat, easily swallowed. Larger fish worried away at open wounds. The very smallest discovered an interest in eyeballs.

  One of those lost treasures wore a scroll case on his belt. Within, already ruined by water, was a pulpy mass of documents: Chao and Hua’s coded letter to Salt Minister Gui, as well as Teng’s translation and a further note in which he warned Hsiung that he was leading the rebel fleet – and by extension, the noble cause of Yueh Fei – into a certain trap.

  Its belly gorged, a pike broke from the feast and swam upward. It sensed a disturbance in the water: unusual currents and vibrations. Upward to a roof of shimmering brightness lit by the rising sun. Dark shapes surrounded by clouds of bubbles were disturbing the glimmering veil of the lake’s surface. The unusual vibrations intensified, frightening the king-pike. Still it rose, drawn by impulse. Finally it broke through, hovering between worlds of water and air, glassy eyes staring. Images implanted themselves – high, threatening prows, painted hulls, sails, oars, shadows – incomprehensible to the fish. But it understood danger. With a flick of silvery tail, it swam back down towards the lake bed to lurk among reeds until its meal had been digested and
another must be found.

  Just as the pike broke water and took fright, Hsiung emerged from a hatch in his paddlewheel battleship and climbed on deck. Like the fish he surveyed the horizon. What he saw made him glad.

  Ships flying the vermilion flags of Yueh Fei and the Red Turban cause were advancing across the lake – nearly two hundred, each loaded with soldiers, marines and sailors. The autumn sky was blue and cloud-chased, the morning hopeful. The dawn’s flush mirrored a return of colour to his own cheeks after months of dissipation and banquets, striving always for mirth, led by the moods of Ying-ge. Those moods were part of her fascination. Yet, somehow, away from her judging eye and subtly conveyed disapproval, away from her radiant expressions of affection, he felt a new energy. When a servant rushed up offering a bowl of breakfast wine he waved it away.

  ‘Bring me pure lake water,’ he commanded. ‘Seeing the lake will bring us victory I wish to honour it!’

  The officers clustered round him applauded this clever sentiment, so that Hsiung felt like a Noble Count indeed. Already he no longer required medicines. Though intended to renew his vigour, the draughts often left him listless and dull. No need for such potions now! After his victory he would never need them again.

  ‘Fetch Admiral Won-du!’ he commanded.

  Coloured flags flew to summon the Admiral, who obligingly left the huge, rectangular floating castle used as his flagship. There were ten such monstrous vessels in the Yueh Fei fleet, each large enough to contain hundreds of marines. Their role was critical to Hsiung’s plan of attack: sail up to the fortified harbour walls of Hou-ming, lower ramps and storm the defences. Then Hou-ming would lie beneath his knife like the throat of a panting, exhausted deer, its mouth frothing, eyes rolling helplessly … Hsiung felt the dark lights stir and gasped so loudly some of his officers exchanged curious glances. He must not think that way again! Had he learned nothing from the Buddha’s Caves? How hard it was to be burdened with a foreknowledge of torment!