Jade Empire

by S. J. A. Turney

  The zealot brought his curved blade down in an overhand chop, designed to cleave Jai’s head in two. The Inda-born swordsman reacted instinctively. This was more or less the attack of the falling star. His body responded with the defence of the uncoiling snake before he’d had time to consider the options. His torso twisted left and turned his spear, the weapon coming up at an uncomfortable angle. The defence was designed for a sword, and he almost didn’t make it with the unwieldy polearm. The butt of the staff scraped on the ground, and Jai realised he had inadvertently created a new form variant as the blow slid home, though he doubted it would be one taught in any class.

  The times he had practised it in the academy, the blade had come up to meet the falling arm and should plunge into the limb, between the bones of the forearm, allowing him to then twist the sword back or forth and snap both bones. The sharpened staff met the falling arm as intended, but the base was now jammed against the dusty earth and the falling arm simply drove itself down onto the spear, which slid through the limb, bursting from the top with a shower of blood and rising like some horrid victory monument from the zealot’s arm.

  His new form variant was a failure. As the man shrieked and fell from his horse, his sword falling from blood-soaked fingers, Jai’s spear was ripped from his grasp. He was only saved from a gory death at the hands of the next froth-mouthed lunatic behind his victim by the suddenly riderless horse which buffeted this way and that, wounded, out of control and desperate to be free from the fray. As soon as that man or any of his compatriots could get to Jai, he would be a dead man, disarmed and unable to defend himself.

  Taking a nervous breath, he dropped beneath the titanic struggle, into a crouch. Here the world was a mess of stamping and braced legs, wavering spear butts and staring, blood-soaked bodies. But here also were the weapons that had been dropped by the wounded and dead. His questing hand found the curved blade dropped only moments earlier by his victim. He briefly cried out in pain as a boot came down on the other hand, but it shifted a moment later and his fingers flexed, confirming no breaks as he located a second sword and retrieved it.

  Jai rose once more into the fray like Shikaya, Lord of Righteous Battle. A sword in each hand, he appeared whirling and slashing, stabbing and chopping. Free of the unfamiliar and unwieldy makeshift spear, his training once more came to the fore and Jai danced the dance of war, steel cutting into foe after foe.

  But the forms would not win this battle. Tactics and discipline would not win it. Determination and right would not win it. Nothing could win this battle. As Jai’s mind slowly began to take in more than his immediate opponents, he realised the terrible peril they were in. There were still far too many white horsemen ahead and the defenders on the path were being systematically wiped out, line after line. The front rank, of which he had been one, had gone entirely, and now the middle rank of spear men were fighting with desperate thrusts, but they too had lost one line and most of the second. Jai realised with a shock that he had been forced back, unnoticed, during the fight and was now among the last few spear men. Then the enemy would be into the lines of men with axes and shovels, sticks and sickles. And if the spear men, who were armed to defend against cavalry, had fallen so quickly, the others would be gone in the blink of an eye.

  His seeking sword found an opening and jabbed up into the unprotected belly of a rider while the other hand cut across the thigh of a second zealot, but Jai almost fell as someone knocked into him from behind. He risked a glance over his shoulder and felt his heart shatter at the sight of the Crimson Guard and Cinna’s blue and white warriors breaking and fleeing the scene.

  He shouted something in the noise and violence about cowardice and honour, but only the zealots were paying him attention.

  Turning back, he danced his death, feet leaping and twisting, arms swinging, rising, falling, sword whipping and lancing, curving and slashing. Men screamed. Men died. Jai felt the first two blows land, though fortunately they were both flesh wounds, one in the left thigh and one in the left shoulder. He compensated, pressing his right towards the enemy.

  ‘Jai!’

  His surprised gaze shot this way and that across the path, seeking the source of the call even as he lunged and parried.

  ‘For the God’s sake Jai, run!’ called that same voice, and Jai’s eyes widened as the machine broke clear of the trees to the side. He almost fell beneath it, which would certainly have meant his death, and he took another sharp, glancing blow across the shoulder as he leapt away.

  The huge timber and iron plough that had been standing on its end just off the path, tethered to the tree, fell free and smashed a horse and rider out of the way, pulverising both. Jai didn’t see the matching trap at the other side for he was running now, but he heard the second plough smash down. Cinna’s last ploy. The two ploughs had been rotting and rusting close to the end of the monastery lands, and it had not taken a great deal of work to drag them fifty paces into the treeline, push them upright and tie them to the tree.

  But with them now smashed and tangled together, forming a barricade on the road, it would take much longer to move them out of the way, especially with the huge piles of dead in the forest path.

  Cinna burst out of the undergrowth at speed along with a dozen men, running with the agility and pace of a man half his age. Jai caught sight of Jiang emerging from the other verge a short way ahead, a dozen red-armoured men with him.

  ‘Did you not hear the bells?’ Cinna shouted as they ran, making for the nearest of the tethered horses.

  ‘No. Didn’t hear anything except my own blood pumping.’

  Cinna snorted. ‘You’re a dangerous man, Jai.’

  As they ran, the younger warrior glanced back to see the Faithful at the obstacle. They were howling and cursing impotently as some of their number slid from the horses and began to try and move the ploughs to the side of the path. Others were arguing and gesticulating. Jai, though, ignored them, concentrating on the one figure. A single rider in a yellow turban sat amid the argument, silent and upright, peering on down the track, clearly watching the general and his men escaping, though oddly without becoming visibly enraged. Was this the Sizhad of whom Dev was so worried? There was certainly something deathly calm about him. And something oddly familiar too.

  ‘Mind if I have one of those?’

  He tore his gaze from the halted riders and saw Cinna pointing at the swords in his hands. Smiling grimly, he passed the straighter of the two to the general, who took it gratefully. ‘That feels better.’

  Moments later, they reached the nearest knot of horses and climbed up. A quick glance confirmed that, apart from a score of men with minor wounds who were almost to safety, he and the general were the last. They kicked their horses into life and rode out of the jungle into the fields, where Jai could now finally hear the bell clanging, telling them that the refugees were across the bridge.

  Jai felt a wave of relief. They had done it. And there would be time for them to cross and destroy the bridge before the white-clad lunatics could catch up. They had escaped the Sizhad, and should be able to get themselves safely lost once they were across that river.

  If riding into the lands of the dead could ever be considered safe…

  But then, had they not taken up blades now without the guardian spirits coming for them?

  With a jolt, he realised he had not seen Dev during the fight, or the retreat. Dev might be military trained, but he was no expert swordsman like Jai. He was a tactician. A thinker.

  ‘Did you see my brother, General?’ he asked Cinna, who shook his head.

  ‘Hopefully he had more sense than you.’

  They rode forward until they caught up with the next group of riders, among whom General Jiang was congratulating his men.

  ‘Jai.’

  ‘Sir, did you see my brother?’

  Jiang nodded, and for a moment Jai’s heart faltered. ‘He is up ahead. He heard the bells, unlike some, apparently.’

  Jai laughed amid
an explosive release of tension.

  Jiang and Cinna, Dev and his father. Against all odds, they were all still alive and well.

  The monastery bridge

  The Sizhad sat astride his white charger and peered at the quagmire and the narrow stream.

  ‘It will take hours to cross, Lord,’ said one of his lieutenants.

  ‘We will cross. They underestimate us. They underestimated our numbers, our willingness to follow them into the dead lands, our strength and conviction. They continue to underestimate us. We will follow. Pursue and take them.’

  The lieutenant was a man he would have to keep an eye on. The man had shown distinct nervousness since passing the great marker. In Ravi’s eyes these symbols of a bygone age were nothing more than signs of demon worship and held no fear for him. The sun would protect him with its rays. Even in the dark, he knew the sun would be there, in his heart. Sadly, some of his Faithful were failing to live up to their name. Their fear of this place was palpable. Ravi would show them. He would teach them they had nothing to fear from this place. It was all superstition.

  Mother…

  It always came back to her when he closed his eyes.

  ‘Lord, they are just peasants and a few officers stripped of command. They are of such little value when the prize of the west lies open before us. We should turn around. Strike west.’

  ‘No!’

  The Sizhad rose, eyes flashing dangerously. ‘It was enough that we followed the west’s only truly able general, but now we find the Jade Empire’s greatest son alongside him? They carry a legacy of success. They must not be allowed to live to regroup and rebuild.’

  And they are nothing. It was Dev he sought. Dev, who had been in his hands once, but had slipped away. Dev who he should rightly have executed back in the mountains, for the good of the Faithful. But he could not. He had lost Father, and Mother, and their baby sister. But he knew the truth now, and he needed Dev to know it too. To be part of the new world.

  But he could not tell his Faithful that he led them into the place they most feared for love of a brother. For them it would have to be the pursuit of an enemy.

  ‘Jiang and Cinna. They will join us, or they will die. Cross this river. I care not how, but I want it done now, before their trail is cold.’

  Chapter 23

  The journey south was quite the most nerve-racking in Dev’s life. He had been unaware of just how accepting and comfortable he had become with the idea of the monastery and of moving in the lands beyond the boundary markers. He had overcome those dreadful nerves he had felt the first time they had crossed into the forbidden lands with unexpected speed and ease.

  But now it had all come back, and worse than ever. The first day he’d not felt it, and nor had the rest of the huge force of refugees, as far as he could see. The sheer arduous work involved in clearing out the monastery and moving out had occupied much of their attention. It had been busy work despite the fact that Aram had kept things organised so perfectly that departure was relatively painless, for he knew the value of being able to move out swiftly. And above and beyond the all-consuming exertion, the arrival of the Sizhad’s white-clad men had taken up much of the thoughts of everyone in that huge group.

  There had been neither sight nor sound of pursuit as Cinna and the last of the soldiers crossed the small bridge, and Aram’s men had attached two heavy beasts of burden to the prepared ropes and turned it into so much smashed kindling that washed away downstream. They had paused there for a short while as the column moved on to make sure that the bridge was sufficiently destroyed to prevent easy pursuit. Sure enough very little remained once the dust had settled, and though initially Dev had been concerned that such a small torrent would be little obstacle for the white riders, his opinions had been changed by two discoveries. One was of the sucking, swampy murk on both sides, which covered an area much larger than the river itself and into which, in demonstration, his father pushed an eight-foot makeshift spear until it vanished right down to the tip. The other was the crocodiles that started to congregate with the presence of potential food. Dev had rarely encountered the dangerous beasts, for they were not native to his northern mountains, but there was little doubt that these animals would make anyone think twice about crossing. Most were double the length of a man, and unlike the ones Dev had seen in captivity in the north, there was something eerie and dead about these ones. These were neither green nor brown, but a curious ash-grey. Their eyes were slightly sunken, and the overall impression was of dead animals. Dev shivered at even the memory of the beasts long after they had passed the bridge and moved on.

  With Aram and his helpers leading the way, consulting his map, they meandered south for more than a week, moving gradually west as they travelled, presuming that the Sizhad’s men would be more likely to assume they went another way. Jai and his chosen men had done an admirable job of erasing signs of their passage ever since the first junction they had come across, and the likelihood was that the white riders were now lost, wandering in the jungle somewhere to the east.

  But being free of the worry of pursuit and the dangerous fanaticism of the Faithful had not made the journey any easier. Here and there men in the column had borne weapons as they travelled through the jungle, a thing that had long been absolutely forbidden under any circumstances, and which carried an automatic sentence of gruesome death or lunatic madness in every tale of the Inda from the last few centuries. And though no spirit had emerged from the hanging vines in the close, sweaty environment, set on tearing out Dev’s eyeballs and ripping open his heart, the oppressive feeling of not being welcome grew with every mile they travelled. They never once saw a ghost, but Dev was willing to swear he could feel them all around him, all of the time. It was like being in a cloud of midges, if the insects were ice-cold and some of them carried the threat of a painful death. Dev almost began to wish he were back facing the Faithful, for at least they were a human enemy, and one you could see.

  This was like living in perpetual fear of a fog.

  Also, while the more northerly Inda lands had been full of ruin, with the war having wrecked many regions, and the monastery was a solitary haven of civilisation in the lands beyond the markers, the journey south brought back how long this land had been dead. The monks had not maintained the paths south of their monasteries, and had done nothing with the structures to be found there. Dev rode slowly past whole villages that had been dead and deserted for ten generations or more, now little more than overgrown, moss-covered broken walls, open to the sky. And the further they went the more dead those places seemed.

  Moreover, once they had passed the crocodiles at that first small river the whole world seemed to have been stripped of wildlife. They saw no animals in the jungle, no birds in the trees. When they paused by a river, the fishermen had been able to catch nothing. The refugees became thoroughly grateful that they had brought adequate supplies from the monastery, given the complete dearth of forage. The zealots, if they were still alive, would be starving, which was something of a consolation. But the very absence of life was horrible. Dev had not spent a vast amount of time in the jungle over the years, being a man of the northern hills, but what time he had had shown him that the Inda jungle was the very epitome of life. Every root and branch, creeper and rivulet was full of it. Most of it could either eat, crush or poison a man, admittedly, but at least it was life. An empty, dead jungle was an eerie, ominous thing, and the silence seemed to have infected the travellers, stilling their tongues and crushing the urge to make noise.

  It became more oppressive, quieter, eerier and generally more unpleasant with every passing mile. Likely their pursuers had given up long ago and fled back into the open, what with the hunger, the lack of a trail to follow and the sheer peril of travelling in this place. Again, that seemed little comfort. Dev had never slept so little in his life. The first few nights it had been adrenalin and concern over their safety that had kept him awake. Then, as they moved south, it was the utter silence
of the jungle and the constant sense of presence. Finally, a couple of days ago, he had become so exhausted and so inured to the silence that he had begun to wake with a start when there was a noise, so rare had it become.

  For a long time, Dev had ridden or walked at the rear of the column, ever watchful for pursuit, but as that had become ever more unlikely, he had moved to the front with the other leaders and officers. His father’s right-hand man, a fellow called Mani who seemed thoroughly capable, and another trustworthy soldier called Bajaan, now took turns commanding a rearguard formed of the stronger Inda with intermixed units of westerners and easterners.

  Five days ago they had crossed the great Nadu. Dev’s breath had been stolen by the sight as they emerged from the jungle to the banks of a river that dwarfed even the one they had fought so long to cross. Here, the Nadu more resembled a sea more than a river, the far bank so distant its features could barely be made out. And the bridge…