by Zoe Marriott
I swept the next section of grass more cautiously. No trap. Stepped, then swept again. Clear.
“Nearly there,” I muttered, mostly to myself.
“Watch out!” He sounded worried again. “I – I can hear you. You’re nearly on top of me. Don’t fall in!”
He sounded like he was speaking from under my feet. But I couldn’t see him, or any trace of a pit. Frowning, I planted my feet and jabbed the stick firmly down at the ground. Solid. Here? No, solid. Here? No. Here—
The staff plunged into the ground with no resistance. A mound of dry-looking, tussocky grass collapsed in on itself with a gentle rustle, revealing a deep crevice, cunningly camouflaged. As the grass fell, a waft of fetid, stinking air drifted up into my face and I gagged. It was the smell of decay, of spoiled meat. I coughed, and my mouth and nose watered.
“You’re down there?” I asked, my voice coming out higher than I’d intended. Without waiting for an answer, I went down on my knees, shoving away more of the dried grass to reveal slender bamboo sticks, woven into a lattice. These were what made the ground above the pit appear solid – until weight was placed on them. I squinted down into the darkness, shielding my nose from the stink with my free hand. The pit was deep. Very deep. More than eight feet, maybe ten. But in the dappled light falling through the bamboo rods, I could make out the glint of what looked like … armour at the bottom. A metal helm, still brightly polished. The distinctive shape of a sword hilt.
And under that…
In the moist darkness, tangled amid leaves and the very tips of savage-looking wooden spikes, there were bones. New bones. White and glaring, as if picked clean by insects or scavengers.
No way to tell what kind of bones. They could have belonged to any animal. Any … large animal. But these woods were full of deer – far more deer than people. There was no real reason to believe I was looking at a human leg bone. It was so dark down there, I could hardly see it anyway.
Swallowing hard, I demanded, “Talk to me. I can’t see you.”
“This way,” he said, a little muffled. “I – I think you’re on my left? Does that help?”
He didn’t sound as if he’d been pierced by spikes. Please, ancestors, don’t let him be impaled on the spikes…
“Just – just hang on. I’ll work my way to you.”
The edge of the pit seemed to be straight, but I prodded and swept with the stick anyway, testing for more traps, gingerly making my way forward, expecting at any moment to see a sign of the boy. The pit wasn’t just deep. It was long. I walked several feet along its edge before I reached a surprisingly small hole in the grass and bamboo cover. This must be it. I opened my mouth to call out, leaning a little way over the edge.
Before I could say or glimpse anything, a bird – reddish brown and about the length of my hand – shot up out of the darkness almost directly into my face. I flinched back as its fanlike tail brushed my cheek. The bird fluttered around my head, letting out a mixture of harsh, rasping sounds and sweet trills, and then darted away into the trees. My last, fleeting glimpse of it showed me the distinctive white streaks around the eyes that marked a hwamei, a laughing thrush, often kept as caged songbirds.
I closed my gaping mouth and bent down on to one knee again, leaning more fully over the edge of the pit. “Hello?”
“I’m here!” the young man replied. “Thank the heavens. Thank you for…” The words cracked and trailed off.
“Are you hurt?” I squinted down into the pit, trying not to block the light as I struggled to make him out. A quick, tentative movement caught my eye, and suddenly what I had taken for a bulge of earth on one of the sheer walls resolved itself into a person. He was spreadeagled, body plastered flat against the side of the pit. Both hands were grasping at the white, tangled roots that peppered the dark reddish earth, and one leg seemed to be wedged at the knee on to a tiny chunk of rock or natural ledge that protruded from the dirt. He was almost at the bottom of the pit, only a few feet above the deadly spikes. If he fell – if he let go – he would land directly on them.
“I don’t dare try to climb out,” he explained, answering my question before I could voice it. His voice was rasping and dry. “Every time I move at all the earth starts to crumble and the roots loosen.”
“How long…?” I began, disbelieving. That position must be excruciating.
“Since just after dawn.”
At least three hours. My arms would never have held me up that long. And the smell! It wasn’t as bad at this end, but it was still enough to make me feel dizzy and sick. Dear ancestors, he’s strong.
“I’ve got a good length of rope,” I said. “I just have to anchor it somewhere and – and we’ll have you out in no time.”
“We? Is there someone else up there?” he asked hopefully.
“Only me and my horse. But don’t worry! I know what to do.”
I twisted around, looking for – ah, I knew it.
A few more moments of hastily sweeping and poking at the ground – it had now occurred to me that any square of ground not marked with a trap might easily have another pit instead – brought me to a nearby thorn tree. It was shorter than I, black and twisted and dead-looking, but such trees had deep, iron-hard roots. The gardener at home had often complained to Father that it took three of his workers half a day to heave such plants out of the ground. I pulled on my riding gloves to protect my hands, grabbed hold of one spiny branch and dragged with all my might. As I’d hoped, the tree barely rustled. It would be strong enough to hold a person’s weight.
I ducked under the thorns and tied one end of the rope around the twisted trunk, securing it with two knots. After a couple of testing tugs assured me the knots would hold, I headed back to the pit at a run, following the path of flattened grass I’d made on the way out.
“Still here,” I said. “Not much longer.”
“No rush,” the boy joked weakly. “I’ve no pressing appointments this morning.”
I pressed my lips together to hold in what would probably have been a shrill giggle and uncoiled the long loops of the rope from my arm as I knelt above the boy in the pit again. “What’s your name?”
“Ah. How rude of me. Yang Jie, at your service,” he answered without moving. His face was still squashed against the mud wall of the pit.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Hua Zhi—” I broke off with a choke of incredulous, self-directed rage. No! How could I have made such a stupid, such a foolish, basic mistake already?
“Hua Zhi?” he repeated, a little doubtful.
I ground my teeth. Too late to correct myself now – Da Xiong and Zhi sounded nothing alike.
“Yes, sorry – bug in my throat!” Bug in my brain, more like. “I’ve tied the rope off. I’m going to lower it in. You just need to get a good, solid hold on it.”
“All right,” he replied, voice firming with resolution. “I can do that.”
I lowered the end of the rope carefully over the side, aiming it to hang by his hands so that he wouldn’t have to stretch for it. But as I let the last coil fall, I realized with a sinking feeling that the gap between his closest hand and the end of the rope was nearly two feet. He wouldn’t be able to push himself up, not if the wall crumbled whenever he moved.
The rope was too short.
“Any time,” the boy prompted, still not looking up.
I blew out a long, slow breath and pulled the rope back up. “Change of plan. I’m going to have to come down there.”
“What – what?” His utter stillness against the wall of the pit made the sudden horror in his voice stand out all the more starkly. “You can’t! Why?”
“The rope isn’t going to reach you,” I said flatly, hoping my uncertainty wasn’t obvious. “But if I tie myself to the end of it, I can. You’ll have to climb over me, and then pull me up.”
A moment’s silence. “You’re sure the rope will hold both of us?”
I hesitated.
He swore loudly and I rushed into speech.
“I think it will. But I also can’t think of any other way to get you out. We have to risk it.”
“We don’t. I … I shouldn’t let you do this.”
Suddenly I felt a smile pulling at the corners of my lips. “Well, I don’t really see how you can stop me.”
He made that rough, cough-laugh-sob sound again. Then he moved minutely – a nod.
Good enough. I circled my waist with the end of the rope and knotted it in place. Unfortunately, that shortened the length considerably – but I should still be able to reach him. I hope. I pulled my knife back out of my belt, took a deep, fortifying breath of the clean air above ground, and then leaned over the edge again.
Slowly, accompanied by the strangely ominous pattering of small bits of soil and grass crumbling from the edge, I let myself down into the pit. With one hand braced against the mud, I stretched out the other – the one holding the knife – as far as I could. My feet dug into the tussocky grass at the top. The rope tightened uncomfortably around my waist. A little further. Just a little further. My fingers inched downward towards the place where the boy clung to the wall. Closer. Closer. Almost – not quite…
I plunged the knife into the mud wall to the left of the boy’s hand, as hard as I could, and wrapped my fingers around the hilt. It was the only grip I was going to have. With a quick prayer to my ancestors, I took my other hand off the mud, lurched downward another inch, and let my fingers dangle by the boy’s head.
“I’m ready,” I gasped out, lungs compressed with my feet over my head and the rope biting into my stomach. “Let go.”
The boy didn’t move.
Now it was my turn to swear. “Come on! Grab my hand!”
“I … I don’t think I can let go,” he mumbled. “I can’t. I’ll fall.”
Nononono…
“If you don’t try, then both of us are going to be stuck in here! I can’t get out on my own now!” I heard my own voice beginning to crack with panic. “Look at me! Yang Jie – look at me!”
We were only inches apart in the gloom. Slowly, the tousled head of dark hair below me shifted, tilting back to reveal the pale oval of the boy’s face. He was streaked with mud, his eyes squeezed nearly shut with pain and shame, lips a thin, trembling line. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Of course. Of course he couldn’t.
He didn’t know me. He didn’t trust me. I should have spent more time talking to him, reassuring him. I should have known this would happen. He’d been clinging to this wall, alone, for hours, knowing that if his grip loosened for a second, he’d fall – fall on to the spikes and suffer a slow, horrific death among the rotted things at the bottom. Willing himself to hold on. Willing his fingers not to let go. Of course he was terrified by the idea of letting go now.
For a heartbeat, the white void of panic surged at the edges of my consciousness. I’m going to die here. I’m going to die hanging head-down in this pit. There’s nothing I can do. I can’t get out. I can’t get out…
And then, as if he had whispered in my ear: Are you a coward, daughter?
I forced the roaring white blankness away. No, Father. I am of the House of Hua.
From somewhere, words came, soft and steely. “Yang Jie. There’s something dead in the bottom of this pit. You can smell it, can’t you?”
He nodded again, a tiny movement. His eyes were fixed on mine, but I didn’t think he was seeing me.
“It might be a man. It might be an animal. It’s been down there a while. But there was no hole in the layer of grass where it fell in. Was there? Or you’d have seen that this was a trap and not fallen in yourself.”
A tiny frown crimped Yang Jie’s dark brows. “What does that mean?”
“It means someone covered the pit back up again. The same people who filled this meadow with traps and dug this hole in the first place. The Leopard’s men. And if they came back here once, they’ll do it again, to reset the traps. All the traps. They could come at any time. If we’re still here … do you know what the Leopard does to people he captures, Yang Jie?”
He stared up at me, eyes growing wider and wider until they were like black holes in the white blur of his face. Now he was really looking at me. “Yes,” he whispered.
“Do you want to be here when they come? Helpless and weak but still alive? Do you want them to pull us out? Do you?”
“No.”
“Then. Grab. My. Hand.”
For another long moment, he was motionless. Then one of his hands slowly uncurled from its death grip on the vines. It shook visibly as he flexed his fingers – and then reached out and clamped on to mine. I let out a grunt of effort as his weight pulled my sore shoulder and made the rope cut into me even more. My fingers tightened on the hilt of the knife until they cracked.
“Catch my belt with your other hand.” I squeezed the words out between my teeth. “Pull yourself up.”
If Yang Jie made any reply, I couldn’t hear it over the white-water roar of blood in my ears. But he shifted, released my hand, and surged upward. His body pressed into my back. The rope at my waist was too tight now, it was unbearable, I couldn’t breathe at all, and Yang Jie’s shadow blinded me so that I could no longer tell what was going on as he squirmed and wriggled against me. Was he actually going anywhere? Was he climbing up, or dragging me down?
The knife was moving. Our combined weight was pushing it down in a long slide through the mud. And I was sliding, too, crushed flat into the wall, my other hand scrabbling uselessly at the roots as Yang Jie clawed at my legs.
“Almost there. Almost … nearly there now…” Yang Jie was muttering. “Hold on.”
Was he trying to reassure me now?
One of his hands closed around my ankle, crushing as a vice. His flailing boot clipped my knife hand and I let out a pained croak, vision swimming from lack of air.
There was a sudden flurry of upwards motion. The weight on me eased suddenly enough to make me gasp, and then I was jolted, yanked. My hand – still clutching the knife – was wrenched away from the wall of the pit, and the world upturned itself in a nauseating whirl.
I … was lying on my back amongst fragrant, swaying meadow grasses, a cloudless blue sky above me, Yang Jie sprawled at my side.
Seven
e got out. We actually got out. I can’t believe it. I thought we were both dead,” I rambled mindlessly, staring at the sky. “Dead for sure.”
Yang Jie made a noise like a startled horse. “You did? You – you said – why did you – what is wrong with you?”
“Whatever is wrong with me, you owe me your life – so what does that say about you?” I turned my head to meet the boy’s gaze properly for the first time, and started when I found him unexpectedly close. His nose almost brushed mine.
He blinked ridiculously long lashes at me. “Are you a girl?”
“No!” I yelped, a lightning-fast check of my mask assuring me that it was still in place. “Are you? You – you’re prettier than I am!”
I managed not to add so there! but only just. And it was true, even if I hadn’t been wearing this seeming of a boy, and even if he was pale and mud-streaked. His face was heart-shaped, fine-browed and delicate, with huge, amber-brown eyes. Even the hair had a distinctive and beautiful mahogany gleam. He looked about fourteen, although I thought his voice too deep for that.
“No!” he growled, lip pouting in a thunderous scowl that reminded me irresistibly of Da Xiong Mao.
I hastily clapped one hand over my mouth, but couldn’t quite keep the snort in. Yang Jie’s face twitched. He fell on to his back again, letting out a low, rumbling chuckle. Before I knew it, I was clutching my bruised stomach, helpless with laughter, Yang Jie’s shaking shoulder pressed against mine.
We had just been through an exhausting ordeal. Yang Jie had been close to death, and for me, the war and our enemy’s ruthlessness had been made abruptly and horrifyingly real. We were still in this awful place, inches from a pit which might be the grave of at least one murdered man.
But how could either of us find the words to discuss any of that, even if we wanted to? What could we say? Instead, we lay side by side in the grass, sniggering and hiccupping like children until Yulong – feeling he had been neglected quite long enough, no doubt – let out a high-pitched, imperious whinny from the edge of the clearing.
“All right, all right!” I called out. “I’m coming.”
As I began untying the rope from around my waist, Yang Jie jolted upright and hit his forehead with the flat of his palm. “Bingbing! I forgot all about her!”
“Bingbing?” I suddenly remembered the little songbird that had nearly flown into my face as I approached the canyon. “That was your pet? How did she get in the pit with you? Why was she out of her cage?”
“She doesn’t need a cage. After I fell, she flew in and perched on my shoulder. She sang to me the whole time – kept me steady.” His face was tragic as he gazed at the trees.
That was why the bird’s song had been harsh and rasping. I picked up the makeshift staff again and led the way back to where I’d left Yulong, the other boy trailing behind me listlessly. I felt doubly glad to have my animal companion safe, and I gave Yulong a gentle rub on the nose as I reached him. He lipped at my fingers, kindly not biting. Awkward in the face of the other’s distress, I said, “I’m sorry, Yang Jie.”
“She’s never left me before – she might just have been hungry, I suppose. She has to come back.”
Personally, I wasn’t sure the chances were high. But I nodded anyway. “How did you train her to be so faithful?”
“Oh – it wasn’t me. She was – a gift.” He cleared his throat, avoiding my eyes. He wasn’t blushing, but he might as well have been. So the bird was a gift from a lady friend. “Can you whistle? She’s trained to come back to a whistle, but … er … I can’t.”
I decided, given the circumstances, not to mock him for that. Everyone could whistle, even girls – although we weren’t supposed to. “What kind of whistle?”
“Three high, long notes, going up and down. Like the sound the bird makes.”