Bellowing men suddenly picked up extra speed, racing ahead of their compatriots, carrying those great timber boards. They neared the ditch, some of them dying to arrows and falling by the wayside, but numerous enough to proceed even with heavy losses. And as they reached the end of the bridge, they threw forward their burden.
It was a timber ramp perhaps fifteen feet long, which neatly reached across the water. Jai felt his throat constrict at the sight. More were coming behind as well. Two more wooden ramps were brought forward and hurled across the gap.
Desperate men at the front of the defensive line tried to reach through their own fence of stakes to push the timber bridges into the water with the curved sickle blades of their ji polearms, but it was too difficult, and already the infantry were beginning to cross. They paid little or no heed to the fact that they were rarely running on stone or timber, but mostly on the bodies of their compatriots who had fallen to the arrow storm from each side. More western soldiers fell with every heartbeat, but there were so many of them on the bridge now that it was like trying to use a net to hold back a wave.
Jai braced himself, though he was far from the front, a dozen men between him and immediate danger, men of the Crimson Guard to his side. The meat-grinder of battle began a moment later, and Jai was aware of it not by the sounds, which hardly changed, but by the sudden lurch backwards as the men in front were thrown against him.
Never had the difference between the two empires been so ably demonstrated. The heavy infantry of the Jade Empire lunged and swung with their ji in perfect symmetry as though demonstrating on a parade ground, their weapons forming a sweeping barrier of steel, whirling and deadly and yet with a beautiful and graceful precision. The soldiers of the western legions met the glinting thrashing machine with a wall of shields and short blades, the great rectangular boards taking the brunt of the eastern assault as chips and shards of wood and bronze were ripped away and sent through the air. Then the value of the western form showed as those short blades began to lance out like vipers between the shields, finding openings and biting into flesh. Within moments the Jade Empire’s front of whirling death began to fall apart. Jai had never been so acutely aware of the dangers of such rigid formation. To the casual observer both forces must seem as disciplined and ordered as the other, but the westerners were so adaptable, so individual, despite their wall of shields.
The ji-wielding footmen – those who still lived, anyway – backed off or leapt aside to make way. The Jade Empire’s heavy swordsmen moved in to take on the western shieldwall, their swords held high in readiness for the first form of all sword combat, the attack of the west-facing stork, their three-pronged parrying knives held low and ready. The two forces met with a crash and clang and the scrape of metal on metal, and the world became a mass of figures, obscuring the details for Jai, further back in the press.
Somehow, as though the soldiery instinctively knew to avoid a general, Jiang was not pushed back the same as Jai, and the general was waving his sword in the air, exhorting his men to greater heights of bravery as the Crimson Guard joined the front ranks to lend their specialised veteran killing arms to the fray. They would need all the help they could get. The tide flowing across the bridge seemed unstoppable. Whoever was in charge of this attack, Jai thought in the struggle, it was not Cinna. This man had no care for the men under his command. He saw them as disposable assets and was willing to throw them away in droves to achieve any kind of victory. The westerners were dying in their hundreds. In their thousands, probably. Dozens at a time plummeted over the sides of the bridge clutching the arrows that had pierced their chests, limbs, necks, faces. Others screamed and went down to be mercilessly trampled by men they had called brother mere hours ago.
Jai knew his own general, like Cinna, would never have thrown away such a huge number of men in the hope of a win here. But then Cinna had not had such large numbers to commit at the time. Would he have been any different now?
This was not the time for pondering what might have been. Jai grunted as a boot came down hard on his foot in the press. Ahead, he could just see the faces of western soldiers bellowing the jagged, incomprehensible names of their gods as they cut their way forward. The men of the Jade Empire were not giving their lives or ground easily, though, and were fighting hard for every pace, killing westerners in droves. The world was now constantly flecked with blood, and tiny flecks of matter that no sane man would examine closely. Muscle, bone, cartilage, teeth, fragments of iron and leather and flesh. It was not hard to see the front of the fighting through the haze of gore, for there was so little space in which to struggle that the dead were piling up underfoot and the frontline mêlée was rising to such a height as to be visible over the heads of others. Now they were struggling to fight inside the wooden shelters and the structures were removed, one way or another. One somehow made its way back among the enemy to act as strengthening timbers for their temporary bridge.
Jai found himself in the depth of battle quite suddenly as the soldier two men in front vanished with an agonised cry and a burst of crimson, and the man in between lasted mere moments, a spear thrust from some unseen source punching through his scale shirt, sending tiny bronze plates out in a shower and impaling him neatly. The spear almost took Jai with it as it emerged from the man’s back, and he dodged to the side just in time.
The world became a blur of combat. Jai had trained for years in the best academy in the Jade Empire, and he knew the forms better than most, but this was not a dance of blades with adherence to form. This was butchery and savagery with little time to think or plan. Yet it was as he parried and leapt, swung and thrust, that Jai realised the value of the Ishi masters’ training. For all that he had no opportunity to plan his attacks or consider the appropriate defence, he became oddly aware of the fact that instinct was doing it for him. The forms and their many variants had become a memory within his body itself so that it anticipated without conscious thought, pirouetting through the slaughter with delicate movement.
A soldier, snarling his harsh western words through bloodied teeth and a barrage of spittle, launched at him, a sword driving straight for his heart. Before Jai had even realised he was doing it, his body had bent into the defence of the reluctant crane and the enemy blade had swept through the air beneath his armpit. His own sword came down in the attack of the mindful scorpion. His blade, angled seemingly impossibly in the press, punched down into the neck of the man’s breastplate, finding the notch in the throat and carving through his organs. Any amateur would now lose his sword, buried deeply in the man’s armour as he fell away, but Jai was no amateur. Almost casually, he walked up to the falling corpse, whipping the blade free and whirling in the attack of the seven-eyed demon to take the head neatly off another man and then carve into the throat of the man behind. His red-coated sword came free as the man fell and caught the advancing sword of another, lifting it and then dropping into the attack of the unexpected viper, plunging into the same armpit he had just exposed. Forms upon forms, each one making a widow and filling the air with blood. The world was blood. Life and death: blood. All was blood. Jai was in danger of finding joy in the simplicity of it – something his tutor had avidly warned him against.
Briefly, in this display of deadly prowess, he caught sight of General Jiang, who was now involved in the fighting himself, and Jai recognised a fascinating and inventive combination of two offensive and one defensive forms, allowing the senior commander to dispatch two opponents in a single move and still be in position to block a spear that sought his head. Jai had no time to truly consider it, but there could be little doubt that Jiang had the skill of an Ishi master himself, and Jai would love – or would he hate? – to face the man in a duel.
The killing went on seemingly forever, as though the world were ending around them, which in a very real way it was. Jai was aware of the sun’s progress across the heavens and the gradual darkening of the sky as he spun and stabbed, fought and parried. Occasionally, he found himse
lf hauled back out of danger by a lesser officer and realised he had fought almost to exhaustion. Each time he rested as men before him died, and then, after he had counted off enough heartbeats, he took a deep breath and joined the fray once more.
They were losing. There was no doubt about it. Over three hours of struggling at the bridge end, throwing seemingly endless numbers of men at the enemy, they had given ground to the tune of some hundred paces. It didn’t sound much, but it would be enough. A hundred paces meant that the enemy were now managing to pour from the bridge onto the bank with increased ease and in greater numbers. It also meant that the front line of the fighting defence had been stretched and had given way to both sides near the river bank.
Jai heard his general’s voice calling his name and, delivering an expert thrust to an exposed throat, pulled back, allowing men to pour into the gap he left and hold the line. As he pushed back through the ranks, seeking General Jiang, Jai could see the next step in their defeat taking place. The collapse of the defensive line at the riverside was allowing the enemy to slip past in increasing numbers and they were making for those units of archers who poured death down upon the men crossing the bridge. Already the torrent of the great Nadu ran pink with blood, and bodies were visible like logs in storm water, washing away into the distance, some caught in eddies at the edge. But fewer men were toppling into the water with every heartbeat as enemy infantry found units of archers and laid waste to them. Western cavalry were now coming across the bridge too, and their arrival would cause fresh hell for everyone.
Jai knew that his general had plenty of units in reserve, and some of these would even now be racing forth to head off those men ravaging the archers, but with more pouring across the bridge all the time, things were looking bleak. Moreover, the enemy troops that had been committed to the push were the late arrivals, fresh and spoiling for a fight, while every man on the eastern bank was tired and soul sore.
‘Jai!’
He followed the voice and found General Jiang standing in a small clearing, surrounded by men, a medic tying a tourniquet around his thigh. It was neither the wound, though, nor the press of men, nor even the sense of defeat in the air that struck Jai. What immediately grabbed his attention and held it was the rider. The man was dusty and travel-worn, and still astride his horse even while addressing a senior officer on foot, which was not appropriate etiquette. Moreover, the man’s face was a picture of horror and misery, matched only by the general’s.
‘What has happened?’
‘The reserves are not coming,’ Jiang said in a hollow, quiet voice.
‘What?’
The general waved away the medic and limped over to Jai, indicating the rider in passing.
‘Our friend here just delivered the glad tidings at the most opportune moment imaginable. The relief force reached Yuen but there they stopped. They have rebelled against the Jade Emperor. Can you believe that? Here are we fighting a war we don’t want on his behalf and the men he sends to make sure we keep doing it rise up against him. They turned around and marched on the capital. There will be civil war at home, Jai.’
A strange mix of ideas washed through Jai. He wasn’t sure that he was that disappointed with the idea of a change in emperor. It might be terrible for the empire, but it could be good for the Inda. It might also…
‘Does that mean we are free to negotiate with the westerners?’ he asked urgently.
Jiang snorted. ‘We would have been. A month ago it would have made all the difference. But these new commanders over there? See how rabidly they press the attack, heedless even of their own high losses? These men are not here to negotiate. All they might accept is surrender, and that with only adequate humility and executions.’
‘Then what do we do?’
The general straightened. ‘We deny the enemy this bank for as long as we can in order to save the army. I am not an autocrat, and I will not tell my men to commit to any action when I cannot for myself say whether I approve of it. What happens now is down to the conscience of each individual.’
Jai became aware suddenly that a number of officers were closing on them, pushing through the crowd in response to the general’s call. ‘Signal the rocketeers,’ Jiang told his signaller. The man hauled a great red flag into the air and waved it.
Jai frowned, still wondering at the value of rockets in this situation.
There was a long, odd pause among the Jade officers, the sounds of battle somehow dulled by expectation. And then it happened. With a ‘crump’, the eastern end of the bridge seemed to contract oddly. Then, with a boom that made the ears of all present ring, the entire eastern end of the structure, some seventy paces long, detonated. Shards of white stone hurtled into the air in every direction, escaping a roiling, boiling cloud of red flame and black smoke. Men were vaporised by the score in the explosion.
Jai and all the other officers stared in shock as the black cloud gradually dissipated and the last of the debris – stone and flesh – came down into water and onto land like heavy, grisly rain.
The bridge was now uncrossable. Seventy paces of the structure were utterly gone, even the pylons upon which it had stood destroyed down to well below the water’s surface. The surviving western troops were milling about on the truncated crossing, some falling into the water in the press, many rolling around in screaming agony, burned and maimed by the explosion and flying shards of stone. The damage was appalling.
‘Sir,’ one of the officers said in a breathless voice, ‘what have you done?’
‘I have bought you all time to live. The enemy are coming. We are beaten. And the empire needs you all. The reserve army has rebelled against the emperor and raised a usurper. He has yet to show green eyes, so the old emperor still lives. That means there will be war at home. Each of you must look to your men and to your duty. You all took an oath to the emperor, but we have also all seen the madness to which his policies have led. You alone can decide whether you cleave to your oath or whether you seek a new path. I will not decide for you. But in a matter of hours that enemy force will begin to cross in earnest, for we shall no longer hold against them. We cannot, else we all die and our land will be torn apart. Gather your men to your signals and leave the field. Go east and there decide which banner you will seek, but go there now before the westerners cross. I feat there will be no quarter given by their new commanders when they do.’
Jai watched the horror of the news sink into every man in that gathering as General Jiang limped from the circle and began to move back along the causeway. What was left of the Crimson Guard who had been fighting alongside him in the press – some two hundred, all that remained of a force once twice that size – gathered protectively around their commander. The Crimson Guard took no oath to the emperor, purely to their general. They were loyal even beyond death. Jai hurried after him, thoughts churning.
‘Sir—’
‘Jai, you must choose your path now,’ the general said over his shoulder without turning.
‘My path is with you.’
‘Your service to me is done, Jai.’
‘Where will you go, sir? Who will you support?’
General Jiang stopped and turned, and Jai felt shock at the look of defeat and utter hopelessness on the man’s face. ‘Support, Jai? No one. Who can I support? The emperor who started this entire mess, who will demand my head for my failure? Or the usurper raised by my enemies – men who wish nothing more than to see me fail? No. I cannot go back. The Jade Empire is closed to me no matter who wins control of it.’
Jai shook his head. It was true and clear, of course, but he’d never considered what it would be like for the man not to be able to go home.
‘South, General. To my father. To safety.’
‘No, Jai.’ Jiang gestured back over the bridge. ‘The enemy will want my head. They will seek me out above all others to take as a prize for their insane emperor. I will be hunted like a beast and they will be relentless. And no matter how much a man tries to disa
ppear, he will always leave a trace. Your father told me something along those lines that day in the monastery. No. If I go south and seek your father, all I will do is lead the enemy to his door. Always, since we came here, I have been pushed in different directions, and now is no different. I cannot go south. To both east and west men will seek my head. I must go north.’
‘Then I will come with you.’
‘No, Jai.’ The general wagged a finger at him. ‘This is my fate, not yours.’
‘Now you sound like my father.’ Jai sighed. ‘But whatever fate has in store for you, General, I share it. I know that. I have known it since we first came here. You ride north, and I ride north with you. Perhaps we will find sanctuary with this Sizhad. Whatever the case, I have no wish to face an uncertain future on my own.’
Jiang stood for a long moment, then finally nodded. Around them, they could hear three distinct groups of sounds. On the bridge was angry, belligerent dismay as the westerners, halted in their victorious advance, struggled to pull back and put together a new plan. Close to the water was the ongoing sound of battle, where westerners who knew they were trapped there either attempted to take as many archers as possible with them or tried to flee the scene, only to be caught by those reserves who had come forward to protect the missile units. And finally horns were beginning to sound as flags waved across the battlefield, summoning units to muster, their commanders desperate to flee the field before the enemy came again.
‘Very well, Jai. Then you and I and my men here will seek our future in the mountains to the north. We will have to ride hard, and I will rely heavily upon your knowledge of the land – especially as we near your home – in order to throw enemy pursuit off our scent. I have no pressing desire to see my head separated from my shoulders just yet.’
Fate, Jai pondered, as they hurried back to the small corral where their horses waited with those of the guard, was a curious thing. He had been taken from the Inda by marauding Jade Empire soldiers, brought up as one of theirs and then sent back with them to invade his own lands. And now here he was in his homeland again, no longer serving the Jade Empire. And though the westerners were ascendant on the far bank, recent experience had taught Jai not to revel in such comforts, for had not the easterners been in that very position just weeks ago? Somehow Jai felt that fate was not yet done with him, nor with the general with whom he had thrown in his lot. There were moves to play out yet in this game.
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