River of Stars

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  He didn’t know if that was true, but it was all he could come up with. There were conflicting stories about where the Xiaolu emperor was right now. He was gathering his forces, he had fled to the west, he was in a drunken stupor, he was dead.

  He’d have liked to talk to a soldier, had thought of capturing one and interrogating him somewhere they’d not be interrupted, but that carried so much danger, beyond the risks inherent in his being here, that he’d put the idea aside.

  Besides, it was unlikely that a soldier posted this far from events would know more than rumours, and Daiyan already had those.

  He slapped, swore. Hadn’t lasted long, had he?

  He heard a sound outside. He became very still.

  Not a roar or snarl. The barn’s animals would have let him know if a tiger was approaching. No, this was the other thing a man needed to fear at night, in a place where he wasn’t supposed to be.

  He rose silently. Slipped out of a slanting beam of moonlight. Unsheathed his short sword, the only weapon he had, besides a knife. You couldn’t wander in Xiaolu lands, posing as a smuggler, and carry a bow and quiver.

  There was too much light in here. There was no door in the back of the barn, but he’d loosened a loose board further when he’d first come in. He could squeeze out that way. He went forward, put an eye to a crack in the wall.

  It was horses he’d heard. Now he saw torches. Four, maybe five riders, and if those approaching were even remotely capable, one or two might be watching the rear of the barn already. Although, since he’d heard them, they might not be so capable.

  Still, if there were men back there, squeezing through the board would leave him exposed in moonlight. Not how he wanted to be taken, or die.

  He wondered, idly, who had reported him. It wasn’t an important question. These were dangerous times. A stranger, not one of the usual smugglers, arriving in a village, asking even casual questions over kumiss in a drinking place ... that might be worth a word to the garrison, curry favour there against harder times possibly to come.

  He did spare a moment for bitterness about Kitans informing on another Kitan, but only the moment: they lived here, this was the reality of their lives, and it wasn’t as if the emperor in Hanjin had done anything to reclaim them, for all the poems and songs. Not this emperor, not his father, not his father’s father, all the way back to the treaty that had handed these people over like bargaining pieces to barbarians.

  They didn’t owe Daiyan anything. If he was captured or killed, someone might be rewarded, someone’s children might eat this winter, and live.

  THERE WERE FOUR RIDERS. Ren Daiyan himself never said there were more than that. He never told anyone but Ziji the details, in fact—he wasn’t supposed to have been north of the river at all. But the farmer in whose barn he’d planned to spend a night avoiding tigers was Kitan, of course. The farmer hadn’t reported him. He happened to be one of those who longed for rescue and redemption by his own emperor, though his family had lived here for generations and he’d never known anything but the Xiaolu and couldn’t say they’d been savagely harsh, either.

  The farmer had heard soldiers from the garrison riding across his field at night, had seen the torches they carried. He’d come out, quietly, to watch what was happening on his land. His hair was unbraided. He didn’t care if they saw him like that by his gate, you were allowed to be that way in your home, when you slept.

  He saw what took place by his barn. He talked about it afterwards. Indeed, he talked about it all his life, and the story spread, in the light of other events that followed.

  The most widely told version was that twelve soldiers from the garrison had come to take or kill one man, but the one man was Ren Daiyan, still only a commander of five thousand, just appointed earlier that spring.

  THEY KNEW HE WAS HERE, obviously.

  So there were three ways to do this. He could wait, sword ready, just inside the doors, kill the first man through, then burst out past him or over him, and take one or, ideally, two others before they had time to react.

  There might be five, with one at the back, but he didn’t think so. They’d want to stay together. No one would want to be alone on the other side, and barns here didn’t have rear doors.

  Or he could get out before they were ready, avoid being trapped in here. They had torches. It was possible they might try to burn him out. Xiaolu horsemen wouldn’t be concerned about setting fire to a Kitan farmer’s barn.

  He didn’t want to be trapped in a burning barn. Odds were they would only do it if they had to force him out, they’d want him alive to interrogate. He’d have done it that way, but he didn’t know a great deal about the Xiaolu—not yet. And interrogation generally killed you, anyhow.

  He was calm but also angry. You were supposed to be spiritual at times such as this—edge of death, the doors you might be crossing through. He’d had a few such moments. Anger helped more.

  It was too soon to die. Too much to be done. He chose the third option. He went quickly to the back, the loosened board. He pushed his small pack out, listened for a reaction. Nothing. He pried the board away, twisted sideways, sword arm first, and worked through. A splinter caught his arm, ripped, drawing blood.

  A wound. It was possible to find that funny.

  He was out, in moonlight. Half moon, west by now, not brilliant, but too much. He moved quickly. Left the pack where it was, looped wide from the barn, opposite direction from the house. He dropped to his knees when he cleared the shelter of the barn walls, crawled, belly-flat, at speed (a skill you learned), a good distance.

  He could keep going. They might not find him.

  But they probably would. He was on foot; they had horses, and would send for others, and dogs. They’d know someone had been inside the moment they opened the door. He was too far from the river and the border to just run, and there would be guards there, too, of course, who would be alerted by a rider getting ahead of him. He needed a horse.

  He also, being honest, didn’t feel like running from four Xiaolu horsemen.

  This was his first-ever encounter with them. Maybe his last, but tonight might be, in a real sense, the opening moments of something he had been preparing for since a bamboo wood outside Shengdu. Or since entering another forest near his village, dead men behind him, becoming an outlaw, teaching himself ways to kill.

  Two of the riders had dismounted, holding torches, were approaching the barn. Two, predictably, remained on their horses, a short distance away, holding their bows, covering the other two. Men did things in combat that could be anticipated. Sometimes these were clever, more often they were just ... the usual way.

  Daiyan stayed low, crawling. He came up, ghost-silent, an agent of death, behind the nearest horseman. The man was in darkness, the torches were held by those on foot. The horse was well trained, perhaps more so than the rider, posted among farms of docile Kitan subjects.

  The man died silently: an upward rush, a leap, a knife to the throat, slicing. The horse, as Daiyan had guessed it would, shifted only slightly, made no sound as its rider died. Daiyan slid back down, holding the soldier, lowering him silently into burnt summer grass.

  The two on foot had reached the doors. They were trying to sort out how to hold torches and swords and open the barn. Finally, they jammed the torches into the ground and unhooked the door bolt together. They tried to be quiet about it, but the metal groaned and rasped. By the time it was free the second man on horseback was also dead, also without a sound.

  Daiyan took the rider’s bow and quiver, and mounted his horse. He had made a point of handling steppe bows, to learn them. They were smaller, for use in the saddle, and the arrows were smaller too. You could adjust. It was only a matter of practice. Most things were. He killed the first of the men on foot by the barn doors. It was easy, the torches were burning there.

  The second man turned. Daiyan saw shock and horror in his face. A young face. He shot that one in the eye. An arrow to the face was a message of sort
s.

  He wondered if anyone had been watching. The farmer might have heard riders approaching. He decided it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to kill the farmer. He collected another horse, used the long lead the Xiaolu always had to hook it to the one he was riding. He was going to go fast now, two horses were better. He rode around the barn and reclaimed his pack from near the loosened board. Came in front again, quickly, but not hurrying—there was a difference—and collected a second quiver. He extinguished the torches. He started south. It was good to be holding a bow again, he thought.

  It was also good to have made a beginning here. It did feel as if that was what had happened.

  It had all been a matter of moments. He ripped the sliver of wood from his arm. He slapped at an insect. He rode for the river under the moon so many poets had loved.

  ZIJI WASN’T SUPPOSED to be here, a long day’s ride above Shuquian. He also knew it was the right decision, whatever Daiyan might say. The smuggler patrols were more active in summer because smugglers were. He couldn’t do anything about the north bank, but he had rank enough to have his own men patrol a stretch of the river on their side—the best place, they’d been told, to try to cross the water.

  You could go just about straight north-south here as you crossed. The river was sluggish at this point, shallower in summer, thick with the loess soil that gave it its colour and name. The banks were steep to east and west but easier here where the river widened and slowed. Farther east, silt floods were an endless danger, no matter how many dikes and barriers Kitai had built on both sides (in the days when they controlled both sides) over centuries.

  A good swimmer might be able to get across here, though there were said to be creatures in the murky water that could kill you. Horses could swim it carrying riders, and had in times of war. But the small pole-pushed boats or ox-hide-covered rafts dragged by horses (or by camels in the west, he’d heard) were the best way.

  The river was the border here. To east or west it wasn’t. East, towards Yenling and then the capital, it curved south, almost to Hanjin, belonged to Kitai on both banks, with the border halfway to the Wall. To the west, where the river began, its course was disputed with the Kislik.

  Although that was another kind of lie, Ziji thought. It was lost, not disputed. Given by treaty to the Kislik again, along with access to the far-off lands that the Silk Roads once had offered. He wondered what Jade Gate Fortress looked like now. It had been the gateway for treasures of the world, once.

  Idle thoughts on a summer night. His second night up here. The excuse had been easy enough: he was training men, and watching for smugglers was a relatively safe way to do it. Their deception was that Commander Ren Daiyan was with them, was leading them. Instead of being the reason Ziji was here, waiting and uneasy by moonlight. Daiyan wasn’t late yet, but if he didn’t come tonight he would be.

  They had a good company, if undermanned, not quite the designated five thousand. Most of their soldiers were at two barracks, one near Xinan’s ruined walls, the other halfway to Shuquian. The ones they’d brought north were a select group and he trusted them. Daiyan was good at judging men and binding them to him, and Ziji knew that he was, too. There was no point, one of his own officers long ago had said, in not knowing what you were good at, if you were terrible at most things. The man had meant it to be cutting, amusing, but Ziji had heard it differently. He’d made it a code of his own with men he commanded, in the marsh, in the magistrate’s guard, here.

  He watched the shallows of the riverbank, moving his small horse east, then doubling back. The horse was not young, or especially good. They never had enough good horses. Another thing they’d lost when they lost domination of the steppe. Once this part of the river had been the scene, every spring, of a massive horse fair, when the steppe people—allowed cautiously down through the Wall—paid them tribute.

  Now they bought horses, in the limited numbers the Xiaolu allowed, or from what remained of Tagur in the west. Kitai had never had enough proper grazing land, and now it had hardly any.

  Ziji wasn’t an expert rider. Few of them were. There weren’t enough horses, not enough chances to become better, even in the army. When they fought barbarians it couldn’t be a cavalry war, they were slaughtered in those. They won, when they won, with foot soldiers in massive numbers, on terrain that made it hard for horses, and with an edge in weaponry.

  If they remembered to bring them.

  There was a half moon tonight, but he saw nothing in the river. Smugglers tended, for obvious reasons, to prefer moonless nights. It had been impressed upon all soldiers that the government monopolies and tariffs paid for them: food, shelter, clothing, weapons. Smuggling hurts the army was the repeated message.

  Most soldiers didn’t believe it, Ziji had come to realize. He didn’t believe it himself, entirely, though obviously the emperor had to pay for his soldiers somehow.

  Still, it could be hard to see how their swords and barracks wine and food were connected to the arrest of a few men brave enough to cross the river and deal with animals in the dark and Xiaolu guards on the other side. Odds were that anyone coming across this way would be Kitan. They had a treaty agreement to stop smugglers, but Ziji didn’t think any soldier’s heart was in it.

  They were more likely to be listening for animals, especially those men patrolling on foot. Tigers rarely attacked a horseman.

  Ziji had thought about setting an officer’s example, doing foot patrol himself, but he was here for a reason, and might need to cover ground fast, or as fast as the wheezy creature he was riding could. The little horse was sweet-natured, he’d give it that, but the two of them would be hard put to win a race against a determined donkey.

  He heard hoofbeats, behind him to the south. There were no reinforcements scheduled tonight. Ziji turned. He was puzzled, not alarmed.

  “Reporting for river patrol, Commander Zhao!” A high-pitched voice, peasant’s diction and tone.

  Ziji swore. “Fuck yourself, Daiyan! How’d you get behind us?”

  “Are you joking? Fat bullocks could swim the river and get behind you,” Daiyan replied in his own voice. “I thought you might follow me north.”

  “Discipline me for disobeying an order.”

  “It wasn’t quite an order. I didn’t want to have to discipline you when you disobeyed. How many?”

  “Brought twenty-five to Shuquian, ten here last night and tonight.” Daiyan was riding a good horse, with a second on a lead behind it. “Steal those?”

  Daiyan laughed. “I won them in a drinking contest.”

  Ziji ignored that. “And their riders?”

  Daiyan hesitated. “Tell you later.”

  Which told him. “You learn anything?”

  “Some. Later. Ziji, there’s likely to be trouble. We don’t want to be around.”

  “You mean those two horses don’t?”

  “I do mean that. But also our soldiers.”

  “Part of the ‘more later’?”

  Daiyan grinned in the silvered night. He was still wet. Had swum the river on his horse, it appeared. “Yes. What do I need to know? How did you explain being here to the commander in Shuquian?”

  Ziji shrugged. “You’re a good commander, wanted us to understand the border. It was all right.”

  “You’re becoming a better liar.”

  “The ‘good commander’ part, you mean?”

  Daiyan laughed. “Anything else?”

  Ziji was happy and irritated at the same time. That happened a fair bit with Daiyan. It seemed to him sometimes that he was like a father with the other man. The feeling you might have when a missing child turned up safely—relieved and angry at the same time.

  He said, “One idiot is roaming around, west of us. He’ll need to be moved if you say trouble’s coming.”

  “Roaming? What do you mean?”

  Ziji realized he wasn’t unhappy telling this. A small yielding to irritation. “Remember the woman whose life you saved in the Genyue, more or
less?”

  “Of course I do,” Daiyan said. His voice changed. “She and her husband were in Xinan when I left. You mean they—”

  “She’s still there, at the aristocrat’s inn. But he’s here, looking for bronzes at some old temple in the valley. He has bullock carts, servants with shovels. For his collection. Remember?”

  “Qi Wai is here? Tonight?”

  “I just said that.”

  Daiyan’s turn to swear. “He’ll need to be brought into Shuquian in the morning, along with everyone else who has no obvious business up here. If someone’s stolen horses and ... done whatever else north of the river, the Xiaolu will feel entitled to cross and demand we help search for them. I don’t want this becoming a border incident.”

  “I see. And where will those stolen horses be?”

  “A long way south by sunrise. Unseen, I really hope.”

  “I’ll ride with you.”

  Daiyan shook his head. “You stay, since you were so keen to follow me up here. Have our men spread word that people need to get inside the city. Tell the regular soldiers you heard something. Get them to help. But find Qi Wai yourself. He’s imperial clan, he can be an incident all by himself if this goes badly. Make sure he knows your rank ... and that you were in his house. He’s probably going to be stubborn, from what I’ve heard. He’s passionate about that collection.”

  He turned to go. Looked back over his shoulder. “You’ll get this other horse when you catch up with me at our barracks. I brought it for you.”

  “You’re going straight there?”

  “Straight there.”

  It was a perfectly good course of action. Those don’t always unfold as intended.

  CHAPTER XV

  “Absolutely not! There is an enormous ceremonial vessel down there, Fourth Dynasty, superb condition from what we can see, inscribed, magnificent, extremely rare. I am not leaving until it is out of the earth and in my cart.”