The Mandate of Heaven (27 page)

The roar of flames in the burning village almost drowned his words. Otherwise all was quiet apart from the cough and retch of the Mongols. Hsiung knew there was no question of surrender. Such a disgrace for Jebe Khoja’s bodyguard would be worse than death, both for themselves and their families. And the Mongol nobleman, though he had to be held upright because an arrow protruded from his chest, still clutched his sword.

Hsiung walked closer to the group and examined the injured man. His gaze found Jebe Khoja’s face, puckered by pain. As soon as the Mongol became aware of his enemy, he smoothed his features into the barbarians’ notorious ‘cold face’, though the pain of his wound must have been unbearable. Hsiung bowed stiffly and pointed with his sword at the still smouldering gates. Why did he spare so notable an enemy? He attempted no explanation. Except perhaps, that a forgotten memory lingered in some corner of his soul of gawping as a boy at the Mongol noble on his prancing charger, and of longing to be like him.

Slowly Jebe Khoja and his entourage limped through the broken gates and up the valley. Many of the Yueh Fei soldiers who had suffered at Mongol hands muttered at this clemency.

‘Do not kill all those who escape from now on,’ ordered Hsiung in a tired voice. ‘If they are Chinese give them a choice: join us or die. If they are Mongol, execute them.’

He found a boulder to sit on, the same rock from which he had addressed the troops hours earlier, and watched the herding and beheading of two hundred or so survivors. At last the flames in the village died back and, as the smoke cleared, Hsiung looked up at the dark entrance to Hornets’ Nest’s cave high above. Despite the swirling heat haze he spotted dark shapes and knew the rebel chief was returning his scrutiny, looking this way and that to discover what had happened beneath the smoke’s cover.

The freedom to fight and be killed may seem unenviable. For Teng and Shensi, resting against a rough wall in constant darkness, it lay beyond envy. Droplets bitter with minerals fell constantly from the ceiling: their only drink. Air their only grain.

The long room echoed with moans and shuffles, cries of distress from the other prisoners. Their numbers had swollen during the night and Teng had noticed females among the new inmates. The soldiers had held their lamps high as they shoved the shadowy, cringing forms into the cavern. Then the door, a rectangle of bamboo poles lashed with wire, grated shut. Its huge rusty padlock had been fastened and checked before the soldiers withdrew up the dark tunnel. Yet sounds still reached them from outside and a few hours later Teng stirred uneasily.

‘I believe they’re fighting out there,’ he whispered. There had been an explosion. Shouts. Faint tinkles suggested clashes of steel.

When sight is denied other senses take its place. Teng had already habituated himself to the stench of unwashed bodies, urine and diarrhoea; so much so, he could pick out less obvious odours. Up to now they had consisted of diseased breaths. Not long after the sounds of fighting ceased he detected something new.

‘Burning wood and grass,’ he mused, ‘drifting in from outside. A hut on fire. But who’s fighting who?’

Perhaps the rebels were quarrelling over their spoils from the Prince’s tomb. A notion that gratified Shensi so profoundly he felt moved to describe Hornets’ Nest’s parentage in some detail. Teng sensed other prisoners listening to their conversation.

‘There are many precedents,’ he pondered. ‘Take the conflict of Zhao Gao and Li Si. One might call that a squabble over looted treasure, for all their pretensions to possess the Mandate of Heaven.’

He might have elaborated on these learned matters had not the smell of smoke intensified. Soon people were coughing rather than moaning.

‘Quiet, Teng!’ commanded Shensi. ‘Come with me to the entrance.’

They picked a cautious route across the cell, avoiding prone bodies wherever possible. Teng had no such luck with a pile of human dung in a drainage runnel carved into the stone floor.

At the door they halted. Reaching through gaps between the lashed bamboo poles, they rattled the padlock uselessly until it became clear they were not alone. Three others had followed them, no doubt with the same aim of testing their only means of escape. In the feeble light Teng detected a familiar profile.

‘Tell me, sir,’ he said, cautiously, ‘weren’t you our fellow prisoner at a certain tomb near Mirror Lake? In short, aren’t you one of the Yulai hunters with blue cheeks?’

‘Yes, we’re Yulai,’ came the terse reply. ‘I remember
you
, scholar. Also from the inn at Ou-Fang Village.’

Then it came back to Teng. He and Shensi had prevented Chao from beating this same Yulai.

‘We are allies,’ he suggested. ‘Well then, how are we to escape?’

A crashing echoed down the shadowy corridor that led outside. A wounded Mongol warrior stumbled into sight, coughing, coughing as though his lungs would burst. He staggered to the bamboo door and clung to it, gasping the foul air.

Instantly, the two Yulai seized his arms through narrow gaps between the poles, crying, ‘His knife! Get his knife, scholar!’

Teng did not move. ‘Is that wise?’

He was brutally thrust aside by Shensi.

‘Quicker!’ urged the Yulai.

Shensi needed no encouragement: fumbling wildly, he drew the unfortunate soldier’s own dagger, stabbing and twisting the blade until the man went limp.

Stunned silence in the long cell. Then a fearful, incoherent clamour filled the air.

‘Can you break the lock?’ demanded the Yulai.

His question was addressed to Shensi, who had knelt by the huge, ancient padlock, using the dagger’s point as a lock pick. For a long while none of the men round the door spoke or moved. Everything depended on this. Teng grew aware the Yulai had another, as yet silent, companion and felt an odd frisson. Something about the stranger – who hung back in the darkness – disturbed him. He could not explain why.

‘Damn you!’ grunted Shensi.

Something deep in the mechanism snapped. The padlock opened with a creak. Gently, Shensi pushed the door right back.

They wasted no more time. Dangerous as it might be outside, better to risk anything rather than stay in that noxious trap. Creeping up the tunnel, the group turned a sharp bend. Daylight spilt over the stone floor, the sweet, intoxicating, mid-morning sunshine of a fine summer’s day. Except that the light glowed in waves, intermittently darkened by dense smoke. Teng exhaled deeply and clenched his fists, rubbing them against his eyes. The sun, obscured as it was, blinded him with hope.

When he could see clearly, he was confronted by a stranger’s face. For a long moment he examined the young woman’s nose, eyebrows, chin. Her naturally plump cheeks. Above all her eyes were familiar, though he did not remember such an angry, even disdainful, fire in them. Surely she was a delusion sent by a mocking demon, one he had angered when disturbing the Prince’s tomb.

He turned to the two Yulai. They were looking at the young woman with signs of respect. Teng noticed she wore a Nun of Serene Perfection’s blue robes and yellow neckerchief. A name escaped as an involuntary, astounded squeak. ‘
Yun Shu
?’

She met his eye. Looked away, hugging herself. He remembered the gesture only too well. A glance at the size of her feet settled the question.

‘Let’s not delay,’ muttered Shensi.

They followed his lead. Although the world outside the prison entrance was a fog of choking smoke, Shensi scurried along the side of the cliff until they emerged at the perimeter of the rebel village. The sight greeting them was enough to persuade the prisoners to turn back.

A savage melee was taking place in the gap between the palisade gates and the huts. Teng shrank from the slaughter, but could not help staring. So
this
was war! No wonder Grandfather had preferred policy. A hand gripped his arm and they were running like hares through morning mist, up onto the wood and earth ramparts, lowering each other down. No one tried to stop them.

Now they stumbled up the valley, away from Fourth Hell Mouth and the wrecked rebel camp, alongside other refugees in uniforms that Teng recognised as belonging to government forces. The Yulai hunter spotted a deer trail into seemingly impassable hills. ‘Up this way!’ he called. ‘Quicker!’

They had advanced a short way along the path, which steadily widened, when a group of twenty soldiers blocked their route, escorting a man upon a mountain ass.

‘Out of their way!’ commanded Shensi.

Just in time. The soldiers panted past, ignoring the refugees who crouched in the undergrowth. Teng caught a glimpse of an exceptionally fat man on the donkey, an anxious expression tightening meaty jowls, then they were past, heading for the rebel camp.

‘Come!’ urged the Yulai. ‘We must be far away before dusk.’

‘Do not!’ urged Lieutenant P’ao.

‘No!’ echoed Lieutenant Jin. ‘No!’

Hsiung’s demeanour remained implacable.

‘He will shoot you down with arrows,’ warned P’ao.

‘Do not trust him!’ added Jin.

‘Did we suffer to allow you to throw away your life – and ours with it?’

P’ao seemed genuinely distressed, and well he might. Hsiung, however, saw no other way. The fires in the village were dying down to reveal blackened, smouldering timbers, ash and scorched humps that had once been upright men. He could not expect his forces to stand at arms for much longer: they deserved rest, the release of celebration. With the destruction of their homes all supplies had perished. Hsiung knew he must lead what remained of the rebels to the Min River in search of food and shelter. Yet to do so would leave Hornets’ Nest safe in his cave, sat upon the treasure Hsiung desperately needed to re-equip the army and encourage new recruits.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘how are we to persuade the old devil to come down? He has enough food up there to last months.’

Now Jin and P’ao were less generous with their opinions.

‘So you see,’ said Hsiung, ‘since he is unlikely to come to us, it seems I must go to him.’

He did not add another, entirely foolish reason for marching boldly up the steep path on the cliff to Hornets’ Nest’s door. With the melancholy he invariably suffered at the end of battle had come guilt. He dreaded what had befallen the old brigand’s concubine after the disastrous revelation she had betrayed her master.

Hsiung was wearily tightening the stiff leather straps of his armour when unexpected visitors distracted him. Two dozen soldiers wearing red headscarves entered the camp at a jog. Behind came a donkey and bobbing rider he recognised at once, led by a monk in a Buddhist’s orange robes. A large, round face looked eagerly from side to side and Hsiung paused. ‘Perhaps I shall not climb the cliff just yet,’ he said. ‘It seems the situation has changed.’

Night brought huge bonfires. The shattered wooden palisade was being used for fuel. Defences were meaningless with nothing left to protect and Hsiung preferred to keep the men warm. He went from campfire to campfire, praising those he recognised and many he did not. Above all, he sought to reassure those Han Chinese who had defected from the Mongol forces. At his command they had been spread out amongst the Yueh Fei rebels, yet he anticipated many would disappear during the night and quietly instructed the guards to let them go.

So much for fires on earth. More numerous were those in the clear night sky; the drought still held and the monsoon’s next wave gave no hint of appearing. Hsiung stared up at ribbons and patterns of stars, each an Immortal or God. What did they think of men, hacking at each other until one or another perished? Did it matter who rose or fell?

Tired of loneliness, Hsiung wandered to a large fire near the base of the cliff. Here he found Lieutenants P’ao and Jin eating strips of grilled donkey and toasting their victory with wine P’ao had somehow salvaged. It was of the roughest kind, but Hsiung gulped it as medicine for doubt. He could not understand why victory did not elate him. When he glanced up he found the fat man’s bright eyes watching.

‘How can you be happy until Hornets’ Nest is dead?’ asked Liu Shui, softly. ‘What use is all of this?’ He waved contemptuously at the burned camp littered with enemy dead, eight hundred at least, though no one could count those who fell into Fourth Hell Mouth. ‘What use is this?’ he repeated, ‘until you have undisputed leadership of the Yueh Fei rebels in this province? Until you have sufficient treasure to pay for your conquests?’