by Peter David
“Oh, do you?” I was on my guard. “And how do I think, precisely?”
“You think beyond matters of mere vengeance. You do nothing unless there is some personal gain for you.”
Well, I had to admit, the fellow was rather savvy for a farmer in the middle of no damned place at all. He’d certainly read me well enough. Still, I wasn’t about to say, Well done you, fellow, you’ve got me pegged. Instead I simply replied, “Really. And what personal gain would I derive from seeking out Ali’s murderers?”
I was ready for him to say, None, you poseur.
“You want the reward,” he said.
That stopped me cold. “Reward,” I said. “The reward… for the destruction of the Anaïs Ninjas?”
“And for the Forked Tong,” said Chin.
“And how would I know of these things,” I said, “considering I am still relatively new to your land?”
He sniffed disdainfully. “The others would have told you. These things are generally known to all our people. No doubt you saw this as an opportunity to enrich yourself, while cloaking yourself in the righteousness of an honorable quest of vengeance.”
“No doubt.”
It is said that ignorance and arrogance are a devastating combination. The ignorant man you can outthink. The arrogant man you can trip up using his overconfidence against him. The man who is both ignorant and arrogant, however, can be most problematic if not handled properly.
Cleft Chin, fortunately, was simply arrogant. His “reading” of me was so dead on that it never occurred to him that any other conclusions he might draw could be in error. He simply assumed that since something was common knowledge to the others in the village, it had to be known to me as well.
Except, of course, it wasn’t.
I was, however, quite good when it came to guessing at things. That intuition had served me well on any number of occasions, and I suspected I was going to be able to have it serve me again in this case.
“So how do you plan to do it?” asked Cleft Chin, watching me carefully.
I casually circled the interior of the hut. “Why would I tell you that? Why would I tell you how I intend to bring down,” and this was where I began my conjectures, “that notorious criminal organization, the Forked Tong… and their foot soldiers, the Anaïs Ninjas?” All he did was scowl more at my lack of being forthcoming, which led me to conclude that my guess was accurate. Thus emboldened, I continued, “Granted, the reward being offered by… the…” My mind raced as I tried to figure who would most benefit from the destruction of a major group of criminals. Well, obviously, it would be the person or persons who would most like to see a source of competing power go away. Which meant that it was likely the person or persons in power in Chinpan… except I’d never heard the names of any such individuals bandied about. For these isolated farmers, such matters as rulers were of the vaguest import. Double Chin had mentioned some ruling sort, but I couldn’t recall the title.
So little time had passed, that it could barely be discerned as a hesitation in my speech as I completed the sentence, “…the… supreme ruler of his land… the honorable… the divine… the lordly presence over all—”
“The Imperior, yes, yes,” Cleft Chin snapped impatiently. “If there is one habit I cannot tolerate, it is this tendency to place endless honorifics before his title. Just say ‘the Imperior’ and be done with it.”
“The Imperior has set out a reward for the destruction of the Anaïs Ninjas and, presumably, the Forked Tong as well.”
“I know that!” said Cleft Chin in frustration. “You’re telling me things I already know! What I want to know is, to earn the ten million yeng, what are you going to do? How are you going to go about it?”
I had no idea what a yeng was, or how much it was worth, and whether ten million was truly a significant amount, although it certainly sounded impressive to me. The one thing I did know, however, was someone trying to mooch their way into an ideal situation. “You still haven’t explained to me why I should possibly cut you in.”
“You’ve no reason to,” Cleft Chin told me. “I do not seek riches. I find my wealth in the simple things. In the shining of the sun. In the—”
“Spare me,” I sighed, raising a hand. “You must want something. Somebody always wants something. What sort of deal are you endeavoring to cut with me here?”
He entered the hut with visible effort. Before I could say or do anything, his hand lashed out and encompassed my throat.
“These are a good and gentle people,” he informed me, and I was hardly in a position to argue the point. “They neither want nor deserve trouble. If you are indeed intent to embark on this course of action, then for their sakes… for all our sakes… you had best succeed. That is all I have to say to you.”
He held me that way a moment longer, as if he was going to add something to his pronouncement. But then, true to his word, he released me, adding a shove for good measure.
Gasping, leaning against the wall, with my hand to my throat, I managed to say, “Did you give a lecture like this to Ali? Before he brought down upon himself whatever doom he did? Were you concerned his activities, whatever they were, would rebound to the detriment of your people?”
His eyes narrowing further so the whites were visible as little more than slits, he said, “Yes. Almost exactly the same lecture. And look how it turned out for him.” And with that emphatic, if melodramatic, pronouncement, he departed.
I stood there, rubbing my throat. That had been wholly unexpected and somewhat painful.
It was also informative and wildly tempting.
There had been any number of times I had allowed my innate greed and love of fortune get me into some sort of dire predicament. One would have thought that I’d learned by that point that such endeavors never came to a good end. Unfortunately, such was not the case. Given the opportunity, would I turn around and make the exact same mistake?
Absolutely.
“A reward,” I murmured.
“Ten million yeng,” I muttered, without having a clue what a yeng was, remember.
“The Imperior,” I continued, as I prepared for my departure with renewed vigor.
Matters of vengeance were of little interest to me. Matters of honor were of even less moment. But matters of personal aggrandizement and benefit were definitely more than enough to intrigue me.
I wasn’t committing myself to anything, surely. I could contemplate an action without necessarily seeing it through. I could explore this concept, find out as much as I could about this Forked Tong, learn how their organization was set up, and perhaps discover a weak point that I could exploit. I was, after all, an outsider. And sometimes a particular situation that mystified or frustrated those who were close to it could be easily resolved by a fresh outlook.
But I had to find this “Imperior,” this ruler of all Chinpan. As it turned out, that wasn’t so much of a chore at all. Child’s play, in fact. To be specific, I asked the children who were playing out in the center of the village, “Where would one find the Imperior?”
The response was immediate and uniform: “Taikyo,” they said, “in the great palace.”
Well, that seemed reasonably straightforward. A small bit of further probing divined, from the older children, the fact that Taikyo was fairly easy to get to, at least from a directional point of view. One went to the main intersection of the small path out of town with the main road, and then went due west. Simple enough. Keep my back to the sun during the day, ride toward it as the day waned.
As it turned out, I wasn’t going to have to walk. Kit Chin’s family, with great pomp and display, provided me with a horse. It was one of the beasts that the thugs who had come to our village and wound up as fertilizer had been riding. I knew there was a small element of risk, since the animal might be recognized by the people who had dispatched those musclemen in the first place. But the horse itself was fairly nondescript, with no markings or brands upon it that I could see, so it was worth t
he minimal gamble in order to spare me limping all the way to Taikyo.
And so that very morning, I set out. I had transformed Ali’s unique sword into the center staff of a bindle, keeping it wrapped in its concealing cloth and attaching a sack at the end that contained my belongings. I slung it over my shoulder, and for all anyone knew, the long support for the sack might have been made from bamboo.
The people of Hosbiyu lined the street to see me off. It was quite an overt demonstration for a group of people that generally tended to remain low key. It made my heart swell with pride, so much so that it was an effort for me to remind myself that my initial impulse had been to fool them completely. For that matter, it remained my backup plan.
Still, as I set out, I could feel the smoldering gaze of Cleft Chin burning upon me for the entirety of my departure, and for much of the time thereafter.
* * *
The first few days of my sojourn passed rather unremarkably.
I encountered a few travelers who were heading in the direction opposite to mine. They stared at me as they approached, and continued to watch me silently as we passed each other. It was natural for them to have that sort of reaction. I was, after all, like nothing they’d seen: a round-eyed individual wearing the apparel of local farmers, with one of those wide, flat hats upon my head to ward off the sun. No doubt they thought me to be exactly what I had first erroneously concluded about the residents of Hosbiyu: the result of a freakish birth, a poor unfortunate bastard whom the gods had gifted with a uniquely bizarre and quite disgusting visage.
Whatever pleased them. So long as they didn’t see it as cause to attack me, it was of little consequence.
The road ran roughly parallel to the river. This was a very clever bit of design, for it simplified the journey tremendously. If my water skins were getting low, I would get off the road, walk over to the river, and refill them. The villagers had provided me with various simple foodstuffs that traveled well. Rice, mostly. Lots of rice. Lots of rice. When I wanted something else, I would settle in at the river’s edge and fish. I had neither string nor hook, but I had become extremely adept with the sai that I had brought with me, tucked into my belt. I was actually fast enough of hand and sharp enough of eye that I could skewer passing unwary fish without too much difficulty.
I couldn’t recall a time when I had been better or more thoroughly armed, which was an impressive achievement considering I was someone who tried to avoid combat whenever humanly possible. The two sai, when not in use, were tucked into the wide sash I wore as a belt. My bastard sword was strapped to my back, as always, and my walking staff was lashed to the right side of the horse’s saddle. The birds-head sword hung on the saddle’s left side.
I shied away from the occasional inns I passed, having no idea of the reception I would receive along the way. Other travelers might have settled for simply gawking at me, but I didn’t want to count on being able to sleep safely in a roadside establishment where, for all I knew, foreigners were not kindly looked upon. Instead, when night approached, I would hie myself over to the nearby forest, which also seemed to run the length of my sojourn. And there, amidst the bamboo trees, I would find rest and an uneasy form of peace. Fortunately, I was always a light sleeper, so if anyone should happen upon me in the night with the intent of mischief, I would most certainly awaken fast enough to deal with them.
Occasionally I would have dreams. Dreams made me nervous, for sometimes they bordered on the prophetic. I didn’t know why. A result of the traces of magic that dogged my being, no doubt.
On the road to Taikyo, I had one recurring dream that was particularly troublesome for me. I would see the bird’s-head sword that I was carrying with me. It was whirling through the air at formidable speed, like a spinning scythe. And there was light, blinding, brilliant. I saw myself, trying to shield my eyes, and everything was silent around me. There was ash, ash everywhere, and some sort of outline against a wall, but I couldn’t make out what it was. And Mordant was there, shaking his head sadly, and looking at me in a most pitying manner.
I would wake up sweating, gasping for breath, looking around in confusion. The dream would dissolve like paper on water, and try as I might to retrieve it and divine what it was trying to tell me, I was unable to do so.
And so the time would pass. A couple of times along the way, I came upon places where the road split or branched off. There was signage, but as I mentioned earlier, I had not taken the time to learn how to read the local language, so it was all meaningless. If nothing else, I should have learned how to read the word “Taikyo,” but I hadn’t even done that. For someone who prided himself on his intelligence and wit, I could be exceedingly shortsighted sometimes.
Luck was with me, though, for I continued to use the sun as my guide to the east, and inquiries to other travelers affirmed that I was staying on the right track.
The weather remained warm, and the skies clear. The longer the traveling conditions held, the more I wondered when something was going to go wrong. I was starting to wonder whether it was ever possible for me to simply appreciate good fortune for what it was, rather than perceive it as a setup for inevitable disaster.
I was another day or two’s ride from Taikyo (according to one of the passersby with whom I’d checked) and had settled into the forest for the evening. The forest was thinning out, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I was going to be able to avail myself of its friendly shelters. The unfortunate problem was that I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to do once I reached my destination. I couldn’t very well just wander about the city trying to find the Anaïs Ninjas or the Forked Tong. I knew very little about the former and virtually nothing about the latter. They, on the other hand, might well have eyes and ears on every street corner of the city, and unguarded queries about them could cause me to have an arrow in my chest or a dagger slipped between my ribs without warning.
The key to my quandary might well lie with this “Imperior” that Cleft Chin had mentioned. But if this fellow were truly the leader of the entire country, what possible reason would he have to see me?
As I lay on my back, staring at the sky, a plan began to bubble within my brain. Until this point, I’d considered my obvious foreign appearance as a handicap. Now I was starting to realize that it could, in fact, be a benefit.
During my stay in the court of King Runcible, there had been any number of occasions where ambassadors had shown up, representing some damned king or monarch or warlord or other. They would come bearing greetings and say nice words of alliance or obedience, and would be in turn treated with deference and as honored guests.
There was no reason in the world I couldn’t be dealt with in a like manner. Considering the stares I was continuing to get, and from what the people of Hosbiyu had told me, foreigners in this land were more or less unknown. So if I said that I was representing a far-off king who wanted to establish ties with the Imperior of Chinpan, who was there to say nay?
It wasn’t as if I was showing up to declare war. Such messengers occasionally came to bad ends, with their heads on pikes while their hands, genitals, and entrails were shipped back from whence they came with a note that said “You want war? You’ve got war” or something to that effect. But me, I was simply an arriving visitor showing due deference.
Granted, if the Imperior was a complete madman, he might have me gutted just because he didn’t like my eyes. So there was a calculated risk involved, but it was one I was willing to take, for the reward seemed promising…
…and also, as much as I wanted to deny it, I really did want to try and find a way to avenge Ali’s death. During my travels, the more I dwelt upon it, the more I thought of all the things he might have been able to teach me. I wasn’t just thinking of combat, although that was certainly a consideration. There was also the matter of my state of mind. If he could have shown me a way to ease the constant frustration and sense of gloom from my being, he would have earned my eternal gratitude and devotion. And those who had dep
rived me of him were going to pay.
Somehow.
As I lay there in the bamboo forest, pondering the imponderables of my life and dozing as I did so, I heard some curious noises out by the road. There were shouts, people yelling at one another, the squeaks of laden carts grinding to a halt on their wheels.
And another sound as well, one that instantly snapped me to full wakefulness. It was a high-pitched, angered, challenging screech, and I had heard it months and months ago during a frightening battle in the heights of Mount Aerie.
“Mordant?” I whispered, scarcely able to believe it.
It didn’t seem possible. I’d seen him in my dreams, and knew all too well the chance that they gave hints of things to come. But the notion that he was really, truly here? And if that was the case… could Sharee be with him?
I realized at that moment that in many ways, my heart had not been beating for quite some time. But the merest chance that Sharee might be around caused it to jump and flutter and pound with newfound vigor against my ribs.
Gods. Embarking upon missions of vengeance (albeit with the added incentive of reward). Feeling such passion for a woman who had abandoned me that I was almost giddy at the prospect of seeing her again.
What had happened to me? What mad land had I entered? It was as if I’d entered a land that was trying to make me less than I was.
Less… or perhaps more.
Opting for stealth over speed, I quickly made my way through the forest to the edge, which came right up to the road. It was a moonless night and I managed to keep myself adroitly concealed within the shadowed bamboo woods as I peered out and saw something exceedingly strange.
There was an assortment of about half a dozen carts lined up, having come to a halt upon the road. Each was being pulled by a broken-down-looking horse. A more pathetic collection of nags I had never seen.
The cages had barred sides, and I could see that each had some sort of animal pacing back and forth. They were a bizarre assortment. One appeared to be some sort of bear, but it was large and round, with black-and-white fur, looking more like an oversized raccoon than anything truly ursine. There was another creature that I thought could be something I’d once seen drawings of, called a “monkey.” It was making loud chittering noises, bouncing around like an insane two-year-old child, and was covered with a thick coat of golden fur. A most curious creature; in many ways, it seemed almost human. Another odd animal was curled up almost into a ball, and its entire skin seemed to be composed of overlapping scales. There was also a large bird—an eagle, I was reasonably sure—which was dark brown, with a patch of golden feathers on its back. It was on a perch, stretching its wings and cawing.