by Justin Hill
“So much for your thirty swords!” Iron Turtle said. “How much silver did you want? Looks like they all need to go back to school.”
“Who should listen to one fat man hiding behind his friends?” Black Tiger shouted.
“Who are you calling fat, baldy?”
Black Tiger growled and Iron Turtle strode forward to fight, but Silent Wolf held him back.
“He is mine,” he said simply.
Watching Black Tiger charge was like watching a standing water buffalo. He lumbered slowly forward at first, trampling his men as they lay wounded, crushing bones underfoot. He gathered speed with each step, roared once more as he swung up his mighty club.
Silent Wolf’s face was set hard as granite as he crouched. He did not move until the club had started its descent, then he let out a short shout, his upthrust open hand meeting the cannon-ball club. His hand trembled as he pushed from his left heel right through his body. Black Tiger snarled and grunted as he tried to force it down. The roof timbers shook with their exertions. There was a loud crack as the shaft of the club splintered. Black Tiger was thrown back. Silent Wolf tried to follow, but the floor timbers beneath his feet had cracked, and they broke as he pushed off them.
Black Tiger saw his chance and with a shout he leaped forward and reached for Silent Wolf’s throat, but Silent Wolf was no longer there.
Black Tiger’s hands clawed as he changed his attack and raked at Silent Wolf’s face; the other warrior parried each blow, twisted away as Black Tiger tried to drag him into a deadly embrace. It seemed to Iron Turtle that Silent Wolf flapped the blows aside with almost contemptuous ease. He stood open-mouthed, twisting and shadow-boxing as if he were the one landing the blows.
“I will help you!” Iron Turtle shouted and ran forward.
At that moment Silent Wolf stepped lightly to the side to avoid a bone-crunching heel-kick and knocked Black Tiger from his feet. The huge warrior crashed down among the bodies of his own men. Silent Wolf scowled at him, and the big warrior’s courage left him. He scrambled up through the debris of his lunch and half crawled, half ran to the door, his men limping and groaning as they followed him out.
Silent Wolf stood in fighting pose, black leather jacket stretched tight across his back, until Black Tiger and his men had funneled through the door. Then he stood smartly and saluted the other warriors.
Iron Turtle clapped. “I have never seen better fighting!” he said.
Silent Wolf said nothing.
Thunder Fist nodded. Silver Dart’s cheeks were flushed. “How come I have not heard of you?” she said.
Silent Wolf laughed briefly. “I’ve been dead for years,” he said.
The five warriors drew around the poster that Silent Wolf had pinned to the wall.
Men of the Iron Way wanted at the House of Te.
Flying Blade winked. “Well, if you are looking for warriors, stranger, then it seems your call has been answered.”
Silent Wolf looked at him. “So it seems.”
“Well! Warriors! Look no further!” Iron Turtle said as he stomped forward. “I will join you, great warrior. What is the cause?”
Silent Wolf looked around. He spoke quietly, so that only his companions could hear. “It is of utmost importance. Do you know Duke Te?”
“Of course we do,” said Flying Blade. “But the duke is dead.”
“Indeed. Which is why their need is so great.”
Iron Turtle snorted. “Who would dare attack the House of Te?”
There was laughter from Flying Blade and Silver Dart. Who indeed!
“Hades Dai,” Silent Wolf said. “And the Temple of the West Lotus.”
Silence. Silent Wolf saw a number of his new friends exchange glances.
“Hades Dai,” Thunder Fist said, speaking slowly. “I will not fight him!”
“Hades Dai!” Iron Turtle said.
“Are you afraid?” Silver Dart said.
“No!” Iron Turtle stamped his foot. “But we do not want to pick a fight with Hades Dai, or the West Lotus warriors.”
“No, who would?” Silent Wolf said. “But Hades Dai has picked the fight. And we must help the duke’s family.”
He looked at each one, and he could see fear in all their faces. Even Iron Turtle looked away and would not catch his eye.
Silent Wolf pulled the poster from the wall and started toward the door.
“Stop!”
Silent Wolf turned. It was Silver Dart who spoke. “My father was killed by Hades Dai. I will fight with you.”
“Well, if she fights with you, I shall fight. I will not stand any man saying Iron Turtle hides inside his shell!”
“Well, if my fat friend will fight, how can I not? That just leaves you, Thunder Fist.”
Thunder Fist’s face had turned red. He scowled and looked away.
“Do not judge me,” he said.
“I do not judge,” Silent Wolf said softly. There were many friends I looked for, who have disappeared. Black Mountain Bear. Gold Phoenix. Mantis Li. They are all dead. This cannot be chance. “I offer you nothing but danger,” he said aloud.
Thunder Fist took in a deep breath. “I remember Duke Te. He helped my master when I was young. But Hades Dai . . . He is evil. I faced him once, and was lucky to escape with my life. He is dark and terrible! Do not fight him.”
“He must be terrible to scare a big man stiff with fear!” Iron Turtle said.
Silent Wolf stepped forward and put his hand to the big man’s arm. “Hades Dai is a terrible opponent.”
Silver Dart watched Silent Wolf closely. “You speak as if you know him,” she said.
“I do,” Silent Wolf said. “I know him very well. He was the man who killed me.”
Thunder Fist put out a hand. “If you are dead, you should be cold, but you feel warm.”
Silent Wolf smiled. “Death is not so final.”
They looked at him, not sure of the joke. “How many men do you have with you?” Thunder Fist said.
“I had five two minutes ago.”
“I said I did not want to fight Hades Dai,” Thunder Fist said. “I said I would stand by you, Silent Wolf. I will do so.”
One by one they nodded.
Iron Turtle picked a pot of wine from the floor. “Remember Guanyu, in the time of the Three Kingdoms? He and his brothers swore an oath together to fight one and all. Let us drink three cups too, and seal our pledge to fight this Hades Dai.”
Silver Dart sniffed the contents. “Open Your Mouth and Smile wine,” she said, and dropped it onto the floor, where the pot smashed. “That was what Black Tiger was drinking . . . I don’t think we want to drink that.”
“Here!” Flying Blade said, picking another discarded pot from the floor. “Fenjiu wine.”
The others all stepped closer to sniff the top of the pot.
Iron Turtle found five wine cups and set them on the table, where they were filled.
He handed each warrior a cup, and they stood in a circle and solemnly drank three cups, one after the other.
At the end Iron Turtle wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I hope Duke Te’s sons keep a good table! All this fighting is hungry work.”
Wei-fang had not eaten for two days and the cage was so small that he could neither sit up nor stretch his legs. It was almost as if it had been designed as an instrument of torture. He peered out between the bars. The cage was in the stable yard. Beyond his sight he could hear the horses snorting as their hay was wheeled in.
“Food!” he shouted.
There was silence for a long moment. He shouted again.
A door banged open and Horse Three stomped forward into his field of view.
He bent down, hands on his knees, and scowled. “Shut up, dog!” he said.
Wei-fang bit back his retort. Fury led to
weakness, Iron Crow had told him. The true warrior stays calm. He does not let anger lead him around by the nose.
“I said ‘food,’” he said.
Horse Three stood up and shouted out to his brothers. “The dog is barking again!” Wei-fang crawled to the side of the cage and he could just see two other guards playing chess on a cloth board. Old Horse was winning and Horse Two had a despairing air about him. “Food!” Wei-fang shouted, but neither of them looked up from their game.
Wei-fang sat back.
He had been unable to sleep all night as he plotted the possible futures ahead of him. They all looked bleak. Beaten to death with a small bamboo; beaten to death with a large bamboo; death by a thousand cuts. He had seen it once, a man lashed to a post and pieces of flesh cut from him and tossed into a wicker bucket. It was not pleasant. The kind executioner would slip with the knife and stop a man’s heart when the chest was cut away. The rest was all butchery. It had the same effect on the crowd. Perhaps, he thought, he would be chopped at the waist.
“The vital organs are all in the chest,” he remembered his tutor explaining. “When a man is cut in half at the waist, then he lives long enough to feel agony and shock. And he will go to his ancestors in two halves, and have to explain to them how he ended his life so badly.”
Wei-fang’s mind went on like this for a long time. If Hades Dai came he would punish Wei-fang for failing him. If Hades Dai failed then Wei-fang would be turned over to the magistrate. His mind had time to ramble through the various punishments. The anxiety was as interminable as his hunger. He found himself less worried about what the magistrate would do to him; it was what Hades Dai would do that unsettled him.
“Food!” he shouted.
The Horse Brothers were on to a new game of chess and this time Old Horse was beating Horse Three. “Down, dog!” Horse Two shouted. This time he brought his pole arm: a long bamboo with a sharp metal spike. He thrust it through the bars at Wei-fang’s face. Wei-fang caught it. They tugged back and forth for a moment, and then Wei-fang exerted all his power and threw the man across the yard and his two brothers fell over laughing.
“I’ll teach you!” Horse Two said. His face was a snarl as he ran forward. Again, Wei-fang caught the pole and used his power to throw the guard back. The third time his brothers came with him, and the three of them brought their bamboo poles and beat him.
Wei-fang could not fight them all. Not like this, penned in a cage. He gave up and protected his head with his arms. The beating felt good; it was a break, at least. At the end Wei-fang’s lip was bleeding. “Will you feed me now?” he said.
“No!”
“Even a dog gets a bone,” he said.
Old Horse bent down and pulled an ugly face. “Shut up, West Lotus dog! We don’t feed rabid beasts here! We beat them to death before they bite anyone. Just you shut up or we might forget what our master told us about keeping you safe. Understand?”
“Leave us,” a voice said, and Wei-fang looked up to see Shulien, dressed in a simple pale gown, and a beautiful girl in a pale blue jacket and trousers, walking into the stable yard. The Horse Brothers bowed, and left them alone together.
Wei-fang straightened his clothes, ran a hand through his fine black hair. It was already getting matted. They would not even give him a comb. “It might be a weapon,” Old Horse had said.
The two women stood over him. Shulien squatted down. “Did you sleep well?” She spoke so quietly, but with such authority. Wei-fang had not known anything like it before. He felt he trusted her. She had a way of speaking that made him want to tell her everything.
“Yes,” he said, but he could not stop irritation from discoloring his voice.
She gave him a look, as if to say, really?
“You cannot keep me here. Not if Hades Dai comes.”
“Then tell us his plans.”
“I do not know them. I was barely even one of his men. Only long enough to get the tattoo. My master was one of his disciples.”
“Why would he entrust a mission this important to a passing warrior? You expect us to believe that?”
Wei-fang nodded, though he didn’t really. “It’s true,” he said feebly.
“Really?”
Wei-fang let out a long sigh. He looked away. There was no point to this. The women walked away and Wei-fang’s stomach rumbled noisily as the beauty followed Shulien out of the yard, as light and graceful as a scarf of silk.
If anyone was the real threat here, he thought, it was Shulien’s young student. Not him!
The student turned and caught his eye, almost as if she had read his mind.
She was small and young and very beautiful. Almost painfully so.
He thought of his mother, and how she would be crying, and then the girl turned away and they shut the gate behind them, and left him to his hunger.
I6
“I always do this to calm myself,” Sir Te said, as he dabbed the excess ink from his brush and then wrote the single character ke—刻—onto the page.
“Ke?” Shulien asked, a little confused. It meant “quarter.”
“I like this character,” he said. “It calms me. The brush strokes have a beauty to them, quite apart from the meaning. These strokes curve sideways, and these are straight. It is a pretty combination, I think. Like sweet and sour, spicy and sweet, crisp and soft.”
She nodded, but seemed a little unsure.
“You would prefer something more literary. I will give you something more literary.”
He pulled a fresh sheet of paper, dabbed ink onto his brush, and then smoothed away the excess.
He breathed for a moment, calmed himself, and then wrote in neat descending columns of perfect characters. When he was done he blew on the ink, then held it up.
Shulien recognized it right away. Mubai had liked to quote it to her. It was a poem by a Song Dynasty hermit.
You ask me the way to Cold Mountain
To Cold Mountain, no road goes . . .
“Beautiful,” she said. “Very soothing. Now—any word from your spies?”
He put his brush down, careful that the end hung over his ink stone. “None.” There was a pause. “Will he really come, do you think?”
“I do,” she said.
“But we have so few men.”
“That is why he is coming.”
“You think I was mistaken to send my best men out? I did not know what else to do, there were killings across the kingdom.”
“The rice is now cooked,” she said. “But let us not lose hope. Much may yet happen.”
Shulien left him to his calligraphy and walked back to her yard. The palace seemed quiet. For someone whose only friend had been solitude, she found the stillness a little unnerving.
Snow Vase was in her rooms when she got back.
“What are you doing here?” Shulien said.
Snow Vase blushed. “Nothing.”
She looked as guilty as a naughty dog.
Shulien strode into her room. Almost immediately she saw that things had been moved and put back almost in the same place. She turned on Snow Vase—her look said it all.
“I’m sorry,” Snow Vase said. “I just wanted to see it again.”
“It is better that it remains hidden.”
“I understand,” Snow Vase said. “I can hardly believe that this is the sword that Guanyu used. My mother used to tell me such tales when I was young, and the ones of the Three Kingdoms were my favorite. Even more than the Monkey King. Is it wrong to believe too much in stories?”
“No. I don’t think so. I remember the Three Kingdoms, and how much I learned from Guanyu and Cao Cao.”
“I heard tales of you, and Mubai, and the Green Destiny.”
“Really? I don’t know why. Don’t put too much faith in those tales.”
“Did Guanyu reall
y wear the Green Destiny?”
“So the tales tell.”
“Then how did he lose?”
“Fate,” Shulien said. “Luck. It always runs out.”
“Is the sword as great as men say?”
“It is finely crafted. Exquisite, in fact. There is no sword like it: light and lean and beautiful. A sage once said that only the man who could hold the Green Destiny could be the ruler of the martial world. So many have tried and died to claim it. That is why it is being sought now. By those who wish to command others, dominate, control. I have no interest in these. The sword has no power over me. I have never seen it display magical powers. I do not see the title it bestows upon the wielder, or the power, or the prestige; I see the pain it has brought. The constant squabbling among mighty men that brings them all down low.”
“Why keep it then? Why only hide it when you could destroy it?”
“I tried to. But the blade is too hard for me. I could neither bend it nor break it. So I gave it to the finest swordsmith in the capital and told him to melt it down and craft a vase from it, or something that could cause no harm to the world. A week later, I thought the deed was done, but he came back to me, and I saw that the sword was unblemished and my heart was heavy. I took it back into my care because it was not fair to burden another with this thing. I sat in despair and then meditation, and occasionally in my despair I offered up incense to the Heavens, and looked for a sign or a message in the clouds or the flight of the wild geese in the blue winter skies. But there was none. No answer from without, only within. I saw that this was a test I must take, and pass or fail, but take nonetheless. ‘There is nothing I can do,’ I thought. ‘This sword has defeated me.’” Shulien looked up. “So I think it is not our fate to see the sword destroyed. It is our fate to carry it through life, and by bearing it the best we can we show our true natures.”
“And be the master of the martial world, as the sage has prophesied?”
“For me those words do not go with the sword. They are other men’s words, and hold no power over us today. But enough of this. I was suspicious of you at first, but I see there is honesty within you. And goodness. Would you like to help me here, in this trial, and to be my student?”