River of Stars

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  And Shan has come right up to him, for this is the thing she’d needed to do, beyond all calculations and memories of lessons long ago. She needed to be this close. And her hands are briefly steady, her breathing steady, her anger a cold, bright star as she looses her second arrow from barely an arm’s length away, so close she can smell the Altai rider, and she aims for his face.

  His mouth is open to laugh, or shout. Or perhaps, perhaps to scream? The arrow flies into his mouth, through teeth and throat and the back of his head and his sword falls and he falls, beside the poet’s son, beside Lu Mah, on the grass there, in the sunlight, in the spring.

  TIME BECOMES STRANGE. Shan is uncertain how and when certain things happen. She is aware that someone is holding her upright beside Mah’s fallen body and that of the Altai she’s killed (she has just killed a man). She understands that it is the poet’s wife, and that Qing Zemin is weeping, but Shan doesn’t remember seeing her come out, or the other women here.

  She sees some of the children at a distance, outside the women’s quarters. They have been kept away, obviously. She thinks, That is good, they should not see this. But perhaps they should, perhaps they need to know this is the world.

  She can’t stop shaking. Her throat is so dry. She doesn’t seem to be crying. She closes her eyes. Qing Zemin smells of her perfume (she always does). Her hand is strong and tight across Shan’s waist. She is murmuring softly, not even words, the way one might soothe a child or a frightened animal.

  But this is her stepson, Shan thinks, and she knows—because she’s seen—how much loved Mah has been in this house, by all of them. How much he’s been needed.

  I need to be comforting her, she thinks.

  She has to stop shaking first. She is afraid her legs will give out if she isn’t held up.

  At some point, someone says, “Look,” and she does look and sees the two brothers coming across the grass from the edge of the property, past the plum trees, and something begins crying in her heart.

  The women make way for them, a pathway to a body. The younger brother, the uncle, has a hand on the poet’s arm to steady him, but it is Chao who is weeping.

  Mah’s father sets aside his walking stick and kneels in the wet grass by his son. He takes Mah’s hand and holds it between his own. He looks at his son’s face. Shan sees his robe and over-tunic being stained by water and by blood. He keeps looking at Mah’s features. They aren’t distorted or afraid, Shan thinks. He seems to have crossed over with a calm heart. His sword lies a little distance away, very bright on the grass.

  “This is extremely sorrowful,” Lu Chen says finally. And with those words Shan’s own tears come.

  “I’m so sorry!” she cries. “It is my fault!”

  The poet looks up. “Surely no. You killed the barbarian, did you not? It is wonderfully brave.”

  “But I missed! I sent my first arrow awry. To the left. The way I always ...” She trails off. Her throat is choked.

  “You killed an Altai warrior, Lady Lin. You saved us all.”

  “No,” Shan cries. “Look at him! I didn’t!”

  “I am looking,” his father says. “But it is not your error in any way. I am ... I am guessing Mah rushed out to give you a chance to run away and you did not. Did he call out?”

  “Yes,” Shan manages. “Yes, he did. He was ... the man was coming for me at the gazebo.”

  The poet nods. Beside him, above him, his brother’s face looks lined and old and tears are on his cheeks.

  Lu Chen is still holding his dead son’s hand. “Did he ... Lady Lin, did Mah say anything? If you would be good enough to tell me ...”

  Shan is nodding, almost convulsively. Lady Qing still holds her.

  “I didn’t understand,” Shan says.

  The poet looks up at her. His eyes are wide and deep. He says, “He challenged him?”

  She does not know how he knows.

  She nods again. “He ... he said, ‘Evil district overlord, we are storming your fortress now!’”

  “Oh, sweet child,” Lu Chao, the uncle, says.

  But Mah wasn’t a child, Shan thinks, suddenly confused. And, Surely he doesn’t mean me? But then she hears a new sound and looks away from the tall man to the two on the grass, one dead, one holding the dead one’s hand, and she sees a father begin to weep for his son.

  TIME IS RUNNING AGAIN, it is passing overhead, going through them, carrying them away with it, though no one leaves the meadow. It is all strange. Broken. Shan doesn’t know how long they’ve been here now. Sun and cloud, warmer and then cold again as shadows slide and the wind remains.

  It is Lu Chao beside her now. He is very tall. He holds her. She can lean against him. She is still trembling. She wonders if she will ever stop. The poet is still on his knees on the grass. Shan thinks: someone should take him inside, bring him dry clothing by a fire. But she also thinks, has a stone-hard aching sense, that Mah’s father knows that when he releases his son’s hand it will be forever.

  Other sounds. They look that way, towards the front of the property, and fear comes again, blade-sharp. Men are here, a number of them. Are we dead now? Shan thinks, cannot help herself.

  Then she recognizes the one at the front of this new group, hurrying on foot towards them across the meadow, and she looks for another man and doesn’t see him.

  Zhao Ziji drops to his knees beside Mah, across from where the dead man’s father holds his hand. Ziji presses his face to the wet, cold earth three times. He says, “I will not forgive myself.”

  The poet looks at him. “Why so? How is this your doing at all?”

  “We should have known some of them might escape, come this way!”

  Ziji, whom Shan had begun to know a little and admire a great deal on their journey south, is in great distress.

  “Have they crossed the river, then?” It is Lu Chao, beside her, his voice holding to calm, but with an edge in it. “Are they coming?”

  “No, no,” Ziji says. He stands. Shan sees he has a wound. His men are behind him, their horses by the fence. “They are dying and dead,” Zhao Ziji says. “We destroyed an Altai force west of here. Towards Red Cliff. On the riverbank and on the river, trying to cross in secret.”

  “Destroyed them?” Chao says.

  “Yes, my lord. Commander Ren learned their plan, which they had thought was hidden. We ambushed them on the water and cut down their advance guard on this shore. Others of our men attacked those remaining on the northern bank. We have claimed all the horses that swam the river. My lords, it is a very great victory.”

  Lu Chen looks at him. “So this one here ... ?”

  “Was fleeing for his life. Trapped on the wrong side of the river.”

  “He must have been very afraid,” the poet says.

  Shan has no idea how he can even frame such a thought. “There will be others?” Chao says.

  “Undoubtedly, my lord. We will search them out. But ... it is impossible to track every man who flees a battlefield.”

  “Of course,” says the poet. “Of course it is, Commander Zhao.” His voice is gentle. He is holding his dead son’s hand. “Well done, commander. Well done, all of you.”

  Ziji looks at the Altai rider’s body. “How was he killed?”

  “The Lady Lin Shan killed him with an arrow,” says Lu Chao.

  “What?” Ziji turns to her in disbelief.

  Shan needs to speak, has to clear her throat first. She says, “My father ... my father taught me. A little. When I was young.”

  “You put an arrow in an Altai warrior?”

  She nods her head. At least she isn’t shaking any more. She still feels lightheaded, as if she might fall.

  “Oh, my lady, Daiyan will never forgive me,” Ziji says. “I will never forgive myself.”

  Shan shakes her head. It is remarkably difficult to speak. She says, “No. It wasn’t you.” And then, “Is Ren Daiyan all right?”

  Ziji is still staring at her. He looks over at the dead Altai and ba
ck to Shan. He shakes his head in wonder. “He was going to ride here himself. I told him I would do it. He needed to stay, my lady. We don’t know what they will do at their main camp when they learn of their defeat. It is very important. If they decide to cross, Daiyan has to take the boats downstream.”

  “Is that bad?”

  Ziji draws a breath. “Lady Lin, if the Altai try to cross now we will destroy them.”

  “Let us hope they try, then,” says Lu Chao gravely.

  Ziji is still looking at her. Awkwardly, he says, “I am speaking truth. He was going to ride here alone as soon as we realized some of them might have fled.”

  “There are many other farms, villages. East Slope is only one,” Shan says. She really needs better control of her voice.

  “Yes,” says Ziji. “Of course there are. But ...”

  He leaves it at that, and so they all do.

  FIVE OF HIS COMPANY remain when Ziji goes back west. Shan can see he is torn, he has an expressive, revealing face: he wants to stay to honour the dead man, see him buried, assuage his own needless guilt, but he’s a commander away from his battle and every movement shows his urgent need to know what is happening. They are taking the body of the horseman away with them, and the horse. Horses, she knows by now, are extremely important.

  Lu Chao tries to protest about the men left here with them, says the soldiers must surely be needed elsewhere. Ziji insists that East Slope will be doing them a kindness, housing and feeding these men while they patrol the countryside for Altai stragglers.

  It is, Shan knows, largely a contrivance on his part, if a clever one. He’s a clever man, Daiyan’s friend. These five are staying to defend this farm. And her. She is in no state of mind to work through how she feels about that. She does know the protection is a comfort as twilight comes. She keeps revisiting that first sighting of the Altai from the orchard. She remembers there was a fox, letting itself be seen, looking that way. She has no idea what to make of that. She isn’t thinking clearly. She killed a man today. She is a woman who has killed.

  Mah’s body is in the reception room in the main house. Incense on a brazier, one tall white candle burning. His stepmother and his aunt have tended to him. They’ll have washed him and clothed him—as she remembers doing for her father, though he’d been denied burial during the siege. She thinks of Mah, running towards her and the Altai.

  His father has remained in that room throughout, sitting by one wall, watching in silence. The silence of respect, for a young man, unmarried, without children, is proper. The father’s presence in the room, his tears before, his visible grief, are formally a breach of correct behaviour. But who is going to deny him this? Really? Who would do so?

  It appears that the last words Mah shouted, the ones Shan heard but did not understand, were what father and son used to cry during their exercises on Lingzhou, making a game of it, finding laughter together in a terrible place.

  Shan has roused herself to go out and bid farewell to Ziji. He’ll be riding through darkness. Chao, manners flawless, even now, is with him by the gate.

  “I will send word,” Ziji is saying as she comes up. “We’ll have a good idea by morning, I think.”

  “You and your men honoured Kitai today,” Chao says. “And perhaps you have saved us all south of the river.”

  “Not all,” says Ziji.

  “War is bad things happening. How can we be so arrogant as to believe we control all that will unfold?”

  “We can try to plan,” Ziji says.

  “We can try,” Chao says, and in the fading light Shan sees his gentle smile and it hurts her heart.

  “Wait, please,” she says suddenly, and is hurrying back up the walk and into the main house. The door has been draped with a white sheet to signify a death. There is a small bell beside it, on the left side.

  She goes to the altar and takes something and goes back out. The sky is clear. The wind has died down, is only a mild susurration in the trees by the path. She sees the evening star.

  She comes up to Ziji beside his horse. “Give this to him,” she says. “Tell him it was my mother’s. The other is on the altar here, in memory of my parents. Let him have this from me.”

  He looks at the lapis earring, then at her, then briefly at Lu Chao, standing there.

  He says, “Of course.” And then, after another pause, clearing his throat, he adds, “Lady Lin, he is a soldier. None of us can—”

  “I know this,” she says briskly. She is afraid she’s going to cry again. “Guard yourself, commander. We need you very much.”

  “Thank you,” he says, and mounts up, and he and his men ride along the road between trees towards the first star of the evening and whatever darkness or light the future holds hidden, as in a box without a key, for all of them.

  Wan’yen of the Altai did not order any messengers killed, but only because there was no first messenger bearing tidings of disaster. Some of their riders did come racing east, fleeing, but word had preceded them.

  The Altai learned of their catastrophe from words wrapped around an arrow loosed from the river. Wan’yen sent boats out to pursue the archer who had dared come so close, but he didn’t expect to find anyone. It was maddening.

  He had the note read to him and his rage became something like a fire in summer grass—the sort that nothing can stop until it burns itself out. The message was sent in the name of Commander Ren Daiyan of Kitai, and directed to “the barbarian leader.” No name, although of course they knew his name!

  It detailed exactly what Wan’yen’s plan for this morning had been, where his force had been sent to cross the river—and how it had been destroyed on both banks and on the water. He was thanked for his generous gift of horses.

  It was too detailed. Wan’yen was unable to doubt what the message was telling him. This man, this Ren Daiyan ... he needed that one dead, or he might die of the choking vastness of his fury.

  He ordered his army to the boats.

  They were going to cross right here, now, even towards day’s end. He thought: the enemy will not expect us to come so late. It will catch them unawares!

  They would make landfall against frightened Kitan soldiers on the other bank—and hack their limbs from their bodies and eat their hearts. This Commander Ren would not be in that opposing host, he’d been upriver, and Wan’yen’s best riders were here with him (always). His fury would become theirs.

  The camp sprang into motion on his command, word of the defeat running (like that grassland fire) through it. Their boats were here. These they’d been building by the river, to be seen: the secret ones had been upstream. He didn’t know how they’d been found, he didn’t even know what force Ren Daiyan had used. The Kitan army, what there was of it, was here, opposite him. Had farmers and outlaws beaten warriors of the steppe today?

  The horses. The Kitan said they had his horses. It felt like a wound. A blow to the chest, where the heart was.

  He stepped up onto the observation platform they had built by the river. He looked out over his host assembled here, the best of the grasslands, an army never even nearly defeated from the time he and his brother had led their tribe out of the northeast, that first attack against the Jeni. He was pleased to remember that. They had begun with a night ambush, the strength of surprise. He would speak of that now, remind them all.

  He placed his hands on his hips, a gesture he was known for, legs apart, balanced, to control the world. He looked out at his army, his riders.

  Small things can tilt and turn the world. A change in the wind had decided the first battle of Red Cliff. The illness of a kaghan or the death of a named successor (one man, only one man) had altered the destiny of the steppe many times. A stray arrow in a battle might take a leader. A proud man might be ordered to dance around a fire. So many random moments. Even a simple thought might come ...

  It was a memory of the grasslands in spring: that night by the Black River and the Jeni camp. It came clearly to Wan’yen where he stood facing hi
s army. He could almost smell the night air in another spring, hear the whisper of the grass in the clean wind under stars.

  He turned around and looked at this wide, deep, malevolent river. He thought about swamplands and wet rice fields, hedges and terraced slopes and thick woods and this sky. This sky. Even when clear it was too close. This was not the Lord of the Sky’s realm, not the heaven they knew.

  And it occurred to him, as his heart began to change and his thoughts caught up with it, that if Ren Daiyan had been able to take the Altai’s western force on the river as they crossed, he could be out there on the water now, and the Great River was wide, and his men could not swim, or fight properly in boats.

  Some writers later, describing the events of that night and day, wrote that Wan’yen of the Altai had seen a spirit-dragon of the river and become afraid. Writers do that sort of thing. They like dragons in their tales.

  The war-leader looked back at his army, battle-ready men prepared to cross and destroy. He looked again at the wind-ruffled current of the river and he could not see the far bank. He looked west, upstream, and there was nothing there. But in the eye of his mind Wan’yen, as shrewd a leader as his people had had in a long time, was seeing boats and boats and boats, waiting out of sight for word that his men were on the water. Being upstream made a difference, just as high ground did in battle. If they were there, they could do the same thing they’d done at dawn.

  They were there. Something told him they were. Ren Daiyan was waiting for him, out of sight.

  He drew a breath. His brother, he thought, would have been chewing his cheeks in fury. He would have already been in a boat waiting for Wan’yen’s order, forcing the order. He’d have cast off already! His brother had chased Ren Daiyan into a marsh, and died there.

  Such small things sometimes. Memory, recollection of a scent, of stars, the sound of wind in grass. Feeling suddenly too distant from a homeland. Not afraid, never afraid, but too far away beside a dark river.

  He changed his mind.

  He turned to his riders and announced they were heading back to Hanjin. They would summon reinforcements and deal with this river another year, he said.