Iron Jaw and Hummingbird (31 page)

However, Jue wasn't a soldier, but instead thought like a miner. And from a miner's perspective, there was a simple solution to the problem, not from below, but from above.

 

Two teams had set out from the Fists' hiding place in the Forking Paths, heading east toward the junction. But rather than approaching on the roadway, the teams split up, one scaling up and out of the canyon maze to the north, and the other to the south. They would travel on foot and approach the cliff walls of the Grand Trunk junction from above.

The journey was almost two days of hard slogging. The teams didn't communicate by radio—for fear that their transmission would be intercepted—but at set times of day signaled each other with mirrors that reflected the light of the sun for dozens of miles, and at night employed lanterns for the same purpose. Even with binoculars they were just able to discern the flashing lights and pick out the sequence of flashes that they'd agreed upon.

By the evening of the second day they were in position—Huang with his team atop the northern cliff wall, Jue and his on the southern.

All those selected for this mission, except Huang, had been miners before they joined the Harmonious Fists. And they were well familiar with the heavy equipment they had lugged on their backs these last two days. Huang had only to give the order, and they went to work.

The drill was first. With one man to steady and two more to turn, the bit gradually bore deeper and deeper into the rock atop the cliff face, making only a low, barely audible hum. When the bit was fully extended, the bore went down almost six feet. Then they retracted the bit, moved the drill a few paces down, and started again. Finally, when the night was half gone, there were a dozen holes, each as deep as a man was tall, in a perfect line a half dozen paces from the cliff's edge.

Then the explosives were carefully unpacked and moved into position. They had been the most harrowing aspect of the two-day trek from the Fists' camp, with Huang always fearful that one of the bearers might slip and jostle the explosives too hard, and then they would all go up in one enormous blast. But they'd made it this far without incident, and with great care the former miners managed to get the explosives lowered into each of the bored holes and carefully packed into place.

Next the miners ran wires from each of the packed explosives, up the height of the bore hole, and then across the top of the cliff, a hundred paces to a rocky outcropping behind which the detonator had been positioned. Then, with precision and care, they wound each wire to the detonator contacts and carefully locked the trigger in the safety position.

When the last of the wires were attached, all that would remain would be to wait for Jue's signal that his team had finished the same work on the opposite wall, and they could retreat to safety and blast. Carefully placed, the explosives would shear off the front of the cliff faces and send them tumbling down to cause an avalanche. Rock falling from one side or the other would not be sufficient to block the roadway, cutting off the Grand Trunk from the Forking Paths and the highlands beyond—but an avalanche falling from
both
sides would do the job nicely.

The morning sun was just peeking up over the eastern horizon, and still Huang had not received Jue's signal from only a little more than a half mile away. Huang had been able to check on the other team's progress through the night, even if all he could discern were indistinct shadows moving against the night sky, and they had once or twice exchanged signals with flashing lights. Huang's last signals had gone unanswered, but now as the sun was rising, he should have been able to see Jue's team plainly at this distance. Come to that, a loud shout would likely be sufficient to reach them, if they weren't concerned about alerting any military forces that might be patrolling the roadways below.

Try as he might, though, with the naked eye or aided by the binoculars, Huang could catch no sign of Jue and his men. Could they already have completed the work and retreated to safety? Should Huang order his men to fire the explosives? What if Jue's team hadn't yet finished, and starting an avalanche on the northern cliff face only alerted the military to their plans, and the soldiers attacked before the southern face could be blown? Then the mission would have been for naught.

Huang gritted his teeth, trying to work out what to do next, as the men began affixing the last of the wires to the detonator.

The sound of pounding feet shook Huang from his reverie, and he looked up to see a small group of men rushing toward them, sabers in hand and lips twisted in rage. Bannermen!

 

As the squad of Bannermen rushed his team, all Huang could think was that their approach to the cliffs had not been as stealthy as he had hoped. The military forces patrolling the base of the narrow passage below must have spotted the Fists and ascended the cliff walls to intercept. That they hadn't attacked before Huang's team had drilled the bores and planted the explosives suggested that the Fists had been spotted relatively recently, but that was hardly a point of pride. As it stood, the last of the wires had not been fixed to the detonator, and Huang could not blow the cliff face if he wanted to, whether the explosives were in the bores or not.

It occurred to him to wonder whether Jue's team, too, were under attack, but then one of the Bannermen rushed him with saber drawn, and Huang was forced to put the question aside for the moment.

Huang had been taught, when fencing, always to watch the eyes of his opponent, not the blade. The blade could lie, feinting one way then coming back to attack another, but the eyes never could. So it was that a moment passed, and Huang had already parried a graceful thrust, before he got a good look at the Bannerman attacking him.

The man had thin, delicate features, his fair hair shaved to the top of his head, the rest worn in a braid down his back. Above his right eye was an cross-shaped scar, and a familiar sneer curled his lip.

The Bannerman lunged forward again, and Huang batted the saber aside as he danced backward.

“Kenniston An?!” Huang's eyes widened in shock.

The Bannerman paused for a moment, raising an eyebrow, surprised. “Huang Fei?” His smile broadened, but the point of his saber did not waver. “Well, this
is
a surprise.”

 

Some part of him had known, Huang realized. Some part of him had known since Gamine had vaguely remembered the name of the scarred Bannerman, only a syllable or two different from that of his childhood friend. Or earlier, perhaps, when he had recognized the bemasked and goggled Bannerman's fencing style, just before Zhao fell before his blade. Some part of him had always known.

“Your parents said you were dead.”

Some part had known, but Huang had not admitted it to himself before now.

“I'll have to inform them that they were premature. Of course, once we're done here, it's not as if they'll be
wrong
.”

His closest friend from childhood, with whom he had studied the blade year after year, who had gone off and joined the Bannermen while Huang was still a boy—Huang's oldest friend was the Bannerman who had killed Zhao, the man whom Huang had come to see as a father.

“What's the matter, Fei? Aren't you going to say anything?”

Kenniston An. The only person who'd ever been able to defeat Huang in a fencing match. Now standing facing him, a sword in hand, and murder in his eyes.

“Did these people addle your brains before turning you against your own kind, Fei? Or did you only fall in with them
after
you lost your senses?”

Huang didn't bother to respond. What was there to say? He wouldn't, and couldn't, ask for mercy. He'd sworn an oath of vengeance, with Zhao's lifeblood still staining his hands, that he would one day find and kill the bandit chief's killer. He wasn't sure he could go through with killing his oldest friend, but he would be
damned
if he would ask Zhao's killer for mercy.

“Oh, well. I'll give your parents your best wishes, eh, Fei?”

Huang, silent as a stone statue, launched himself at Kenniston, whipping his sword over his head in a vicious downward stroke. The Bannerman sidestepped and blocked the stroke, then pivoted and brought his own sword in a sideways arc at Huang's midsection.

Dancing back frantically out of the sword's path, Huang put a few paces' distance between himself and Kenniston, then fell into a ready stance. He'd tried taking the offensive and would now try a defensive strategy.

Kenniston feinted right, then reversed to the left and lunged, right arm thrusting the saber forward, left arm thrown back for balance. Huang spun his own sword's point in a circle around Kenniston's blade, turning it aside and sending up a shower of sparks as the two swords slid against one another.

Huang riposted, turning his wrist and pushing his saber forward toward Kenniston's heart, but the Bannerman swung his own sword's point around in a circle, like a windmill's blade spinning, and swatted Huang's blade aside. Then the two fell back a pace, took ready positions, and started again.

 

Kenniston was winning. The conclusion was inescapable. Huang's muscles ached with the strain of parrying so many blows, and his legs were beginning to cramp. He'd been able to spare only brief glances around and saw that his men were holding their own against the Bannermen, but they were beginning to flag. The Fists had just hauled heavy drilling equipment two days overland, and then worked all night to bore a dozen holes in the living rock of the cliff. The Bannermen, though, had just scaled the cliff walls and seemed more than a little flagged themselves.

But Huang had fenced for too long, against too many opponents, to have any illusions about his chances of besting Kenniston An. The Bannerman would defeat him, and soon.

There was one weakness to Kenniston's strategy, though, Huang realized. The Bannerman was fighting as though this were a competition bout, for all that he intended to end the match by burying his sword in Huang's chest. But Huang knew that this
wasn't
a competition bout. This was real life. Life wasn't sport, as Zhao had always said. Sport had rules, but in real life the only rule was Don't Get Killed.

Huang remembered the other things that Zhao had taught him, as well.

As Kenniston thrust his blade forward in a killing blow, Huang saw an opportunity and took it. He fell backward, the sword's point passing harmlessly just above him.

Before Kenniston could shift his weight and turn his sword's blade downward, Huang broke all the rules of competitive fencing. Scooping up a handful of red sand, he threw it up into the Bannerman's face, the grains pelting Kenniston in the eyes, nose, and mouth.

As the Bannerman staggered back, sputtering and trying to wipe the sand from his stinging eyes, Huang pressed his advantage. A sweep of his legs knocked Kenniston off his feet, and in an instant Huang had leaped up, planted a foot on Kenniston's neck, and plunged his sword down toward the Bannerman's face, the point stopping only inches from Kenniston's eyelid.

“Stop struggling or you'll have more than grit in your eye, An.”

Through tear-streaming eyes, the Bannerman looked up at Huang. The arrogant sneer had left Kenniston's lip.

“Call off your men, An.”

Kenniston managed a defiant expression.

Huang lowered the point of the red-bladed saber, now only a finger's width from Kenniston's eye. “Call off your men,” he said, his voice level, “or I may just drop this sword.”

Kenniston snarled, then rolled his eyes to the side, toward where his men were struggling with the Fists. “Stand down, Bannermen! Stand down!”

Huang didn't bother to look to see that they complied but listened as the Fists shoved their opponents away from them.

“You killed a man I cared about, An,” Huang finally said, through his teeth. “Killed him like a rabid dog, on the orders of your master.”

Kenniston seemed genuinely confused. “Well, I kill a lot of people, Fei, but none who don't deserve it.”

Huang seethed. “Like miners striking for better pay and safer conditions? Do
they
deserve it? Or farmers who just want water for their crops, so they can feed their starving families? Do
they
?”

Kenniston, his eyes now bloodshot red, arched an eyebrow. Even sprawled on the ground with Huang's boot on his neck and Huang's sword poised above him, the Bannerman managed to look bemused.

“Is
that
why you've joined up with this Harmonious Fist nonsense, Fei? Because of a few dirty miners and farmers? Just what sort of nonsense have this Hummingbird and his mistress, Iron Jaw, filled your head with, anyway?”

Huang opened his mouth to answer, then bit back the words. He narrowed his gaze. “Nonsense, An? Is it nonsense to think that people shouldn't be starved or killed just for wanting justice, fair treatment, and a better life for their children?”

Kenniston scoffed. “Ancestors preserve us, you're
delusional
. People have to work for what they need, and earn a better life. It can't just be
handed
to them.”

“But if it's taken away from them,” Huang snarled, “it can sure as hell be handed
back
.”

Kenniston blew air through his lips, dismissively. “Spout what nonsense you will, it won't do any good. All of this will be over soon, and your uprising will be a thing of the past.”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn't think the governor-general was going to let this go on forever, did you? The emperor has agreed to his request for fresh troops and advanced siege engines, which should be arriving anytime now.”