River of Stars

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  He needed the right men to go with him under the walls, silently up stairs from cellar rooms. And then burst into night streets to kill the guards at the southern and western gates and open those gates—and the redeeming army of Kitai would flood in, and the people of Hanjin would rise up to greet them, join them, and the Altai would be trapped in a space where their horses could not help them, and they would die.

  He intended to let a handful go back north to carry word, create terror on the grasslands, in the cities there.

  Then he would follow, swift as vengeance sometimes needed to be, and with so many of the riders dead the Southern Capital of this new empire of the steppe would fall—and a part of the Lost Fourteen would be theirs again, at last.

  It was a dream, unfurling like a banner in wind. He was lonely amidst an army, and he was tired all the time, but this was what he’d been born into the world to do.

  They are waiting for the new moon. Three nights from now. It might be an excess of caution but any soldier would tell you it was easier to slip into a night lane when the guards had no light by which to see their death coming. They had journeyed so far and were very close. He wouldn’t let this fail by being impatient at the end.

  And Wan’yen, the war-leader, was inside the city. You didn’t wilfully add risk when you knew a capable man was on the other side. You didn’t fear an enemy, but you needed to respect what he could do.

  There were tales of victorious Kitan generals having captured barbarian leaders brought before them, bound, stripped naked, so they might do the killing themselves, or watch it done while drinking wine.

  Daiyan didn’t care about that. He wouldn’t exalt a horseman that way. The war-leader could die by the arrow or blade of whichever Kitan soldier found him. They might not even know who he was when he was slain. That happened, especially at night. But the Altai would know. The riders would lose force and hope if he fell.

  That was as far as Daiyan gave thought to the man. This was about the empire, not his own conflict with some horseman from the fringe of the steppe.

  They needed to be reminded of what Kitai had been, what it was to be again now. They needed to be made afraid or they would come back.

  And that last, he knew (he did know), was the darkness down this road they were on. He made himself look away from the thought, turn back to the walls of Hanjin. Plan next steps, make sure they were executed properly. He was only a soldier. The officials advising the emperor would shape what came after, it had almost always been that way.

  Early the next morning a white flag was seen above the western gate. Two of the Altai came out. One of them spoke Kitan. They were direct. They tended to be. They offered to surrender the city and withdraw north if hostages were given to ensure that the Kitan army would not attack when they reached the Golden River and prepared to cross. Once across the river they could outrun any pursuit.

  Daiyan looked at Ziji, standing beside him. Ziji was gazing back at him, a wry look on his face. They had thought this would happen. The riders had no desire to be trapped through a winter. They hadn’t expected Daiyan to follow so far, so fast. They hadn’t thought any of this would happen, from the disaster on the Great River onwards. They wanted to go home. And regroup to come back.

  Daiyan needed these horsemen dead and burnt in pyres, not riding safely north to return. Kitai needed that to be so. That required a slaughter here. You didn’t command in war if you wanted the world to be delicate as plum blossoms.

  “What hostages are you proposing?” Ziji asked. His voice could sound frightening when he wanted it to.

  The horseman who spoke their language looked at the other, more senior, and translated. The senior one looked straight at Daiyan and spoke. The other translated again.

  “We need only your commander. He will be released as soon as we have crossed the river.”

  “I see. And to ensure that?” Ziji asked. His voice was wintercold, but this proposal was not a surprise.

  “We leave our war-leader,” said the Altai. “Then they are exchanged. It is proper.”

  “It isn’t,” said Zhao Ziji. “But we will consider what you have said. You may return at sunset for our reply. Go now.”

  The tones of a man leading an army with the advantage here.

  The horsemen turned and rode back into Hanjin through the western gate. The one that Daiyan intended to open for his army in two nights.

  They watched them go. Ziji said, quietly, “I still believe they would kill you and let him die.”

  “Perhaps. It might be a good exchange for us. With both brothers dead, I’m not sure the Altai—”

  “Stop it!” Ziji snapped. “No more. You are wrong. They have a dozen war-leaders to replace those two. We do not.”

  Daiyan shrugged. He didn’t agree, but neither did he particularly want to die by the Golden River to test this belief. He had reasons to live, for Kitai, for himself.

  Shan had sent him a poem in a letter by courier from Jingxian. My heart flares like a fire.

  At sunset the two riders came back. Ziji told them they needed another night to consider the proposal. He asked if anyone else could serve as a hostage to the river. He explained that Commander Ren was dearly beloved of Emperor Zhizeng and assigning him such a role could not be done without risking the wrath of the emperor. The Altai, he said, would surely understand. After all, august Zhizeng had been a hostage himself, freed by Ren Daiyan.

  He’d allowed himself a smile, saying this.

  The Altai went back. Ziji’s intention was to keep this discussion going, delaying until the new moon. He raised the idea of launching the attack tomorrow night. The thin sliver of a moon would not affect anything, he said. Daiyan shook his head.

  “They dislike the dark of moon. You know they do. Two nights from now we end this part of this war.”

  “And then?” Ziji asked.

  Daiyan shrugged again. They were standing outside his tent, the sun setting red in an autumn sky. “Depending on how many men we lose, and we will lose men, we go north right away or wait for spring and reinforcements. But we are doing this.”

  It was shortly after that, Ziji would recall, that they saw a small party riding towards them from the south, lit by that low sun, coming along the wide road to and from what had been the imperial city of the Twelfth Dynasty. The first star had not yet appeared.

  He remembered watching them approach, his last moment of a certain understanding of the world.

  IT WAS FUYIN, Daiyan saw. Their friend, once chief magistrate here, now governor of Jingxian. They had ridden past his city, stopped for a night on their way north. Jingxian, as he’d expected, had not been attacked in the winter. The Altai had raided villages, towns, farms, but had no stomach for another siege. After the horsemen had withdrawn north in spring, Wang Fuyin had been summoned from retirement to re-enter the city where he’d been magistrate years ago. Honourable men answered when their emperor called.

  Daiyan raised a hand in greeting. Fuyin lifted his and smiled.

  You learned to know a man. It was not an easy smile. The governor reined up in front of them. His escort remained some distance away, watched closely by Daiyan’s guards.

  “You ride better than when we first met,” Daiyan said.

  “I’ve lost weight, I’ve had practice.” Fuyin gestured at the walls.

  “You’ve come a long way very fast.”

  “We are going to take it,” Daiyan said. “You can be here to see.”

  “You’ve come a long way yourself,” Ziji said. He wasn’t smiling. “What has happened?”

  A small hesitation. “Shall we ride a little distance?” Fuyin said. “The three of us.”

  Daiyan led the way in the direction of the grove where the tunnel from the west gate came up. He didn’t go that far. He didn’t want attention drawn to that wood. He stopped on a rise of land under a pine tree. The sun was low, the light made the landscape vivid and intense. To the east, the walls of Hanjin gleamed. A light breeze, a hint i
n it of the cold to come.

  “What has happened?” Ziji said again.

  They were alone. Daiyan’s guards had followed, but kept their distance in a wide ring around them. Their commander mattered too much to be unguarded in the open.

  Fuyin’s hair had gone greyer in the time since he’d left the capital, and he had indeed lost weight. It showed in his face, creases in his neck, there were lines under his eyes. He dismounted stiffly. He’d have been in the saddle a long way. And that meant something, of course, that the governor himself, their friend, had come.

  Fuyin said, “May I ask a question first?”

  Daiyan nodded. He dismounted as well, and Ziji did. “Of course.”

  “You really expect to take the city?”

  “In two nights,” Daiyan said. “They have offered to withdraw but I don’t intend to let thirty thousand riders go north. We have them trapped.”

  “Many deaths,” Wang Fuyin said.

  “Yes,” Daiyan agreed.

  “I mean of our own people.”

  “I know you mean that.”

  Fuyin nodded. “And if you were to let them retreat?”

  “Thirty thousand riders, along with the numbers they recruit, will be back next spring.”

  Again, Fuyin nodded. He looked away, towards the shining of the walls in the distance.

  “Say it,” Daiyan murmured. “They sent you because it is a hard thing to say.”

  Fuyin turned back to him. “Our lives would have been so different, wouldn’t they, had I not sent for you to guard me that day?”

  “Life is like that,” said Daiyan. “Say it, friend. I know you are only a messenger. This is from the court?”

  “From the court,” Fuyin said quietly. “They sent word to me by messenger bird, that I was to find you as fast as I could ride.”

  “And you did.”

  Fuyin nodded. He drew a breath, spoke formally. “The glorious Emperor Zhizeng greets his military commander Ren Daiyan and commands him to withdraw his force from Hanjin and bring it south of the Wai River immediately. You yourself are instructed to report to Shantong to explain to your emperor why you have taken our armies this far without orders.”

  The breeze blew. A bird sang somewhere west of them.

  “Why you? Just to say this?” It was Ziji. It was obvious how shaken he was.

  The same distress could be seen in Fuyin’s face. “They were afraid you might not do it. I was to urge you, prevail upon you.”

  “They really feared that?” Daiyan asked. Of the three, he seemed least disturbed, or showed it least. “And you? What did you think?”

  Fuyin looked at him a long time. “I am a bad servant of my emperor. I spent the whole of the ride here trying to decide what I wanted you to do.”

  “Have I a choice?” Daiyan asked softly.

  His friends looked at him. Neither answered.

  It was a moment, on that open ground towards sunset, that could be described in many different ways. The river of stars, in the legends of Kitai, lies between mortal men and their dreams. There were no stars visible in the sky yet that autumn day, but a poet might have placed them there.

  Daiyan said it again. “Have I a choice?”

  The bird west of them, continuing. The wind in the solitary pine.

  Ziji said, “You have sixty thousand men who love you.”

  “Yes,” said Wang Fuyin. “You do.”

  Daiyan looked at him. He said, “Is there a treaty already made? Have you been told?”

  Fuyin looked away. Said quietly, “The Wai River as border. We acknowledge their superior status. Our emperor is younger brother to theirs. We pay tribute, silk and silver, there are trading markets at four places along the border.”

  “And the silver comes back in trade.” Daiyan’s voice was barely audible.

  “Yes. In the old way. They want silk and tea and salt and medicines. Even porcelain now.”

  “We have a great deal of all of those.”

  “And food. We have rice to sell, with the new crop system in the south.”

  “We do,” Daiyan agreed. “The Wai River? We give them everything down to there?”

  Fuyin nodded. “For peace.”

  “The emperor understands they have been retreating since we smashed them in spring? The Altai are proposing to surrender here if we only allow them to go home.”

  Fuyin’s face was grim. “Think it through, Daiyan. Be more than a soldier. What happens if they offer to surrender? What could we demand in exchange?”

  Only the bird for a long time, then another joining it, north of them.

  “Ah,” said Ren Daiyan finally. “Of course. I see it. I have been a fool, then?”

  “No,” said Fuyin. “No, you haven’t!”

  “Tell me!” said Ziji. And added, “Please?”

  “His father and brother,” said Daiyan. “That is what this is.”

  HE WALKED OFF ALONE, west. The other two let him do that. Daiyan’s guards were visibly anxious but Ziji gestured for them to stay where they were. The sun was low now and Ziji, looking for it, found the evening star. Twilight soon. He turned to Fuyin.

  “What would have happened had you come three days from now? If we were already inside?”

  Wang Fuyin shook his head. “I don’t know, my friend.”

  “This isn’t a small thing. Your coming now.”

  “No.”

  “Is there something you haven’t told us?”

  Fuyin shook his head again. “There may be things they didn’t tell me.”

  “Could we pretend you haven’t arrived yet? That you were delayed and ...” He trailed off.

  Fuyin’s smile was wistful. “Not unless you kill the men who escorted me.”

  “I could do that.”

  “No, you couldn’t,” said Wang Fuyin.

  Ziji looked away. “Very well. If the Altai surrender and sue for peace, the emperor has to demand his father and brother back as a term. I see it. So let him do that!”

  “Imagine he did. What would happen?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just a soldier. Tell me.”

  “Chizu would kill him as soon as he came home.”

  “What?”

  “A younger brother who had sat the throne? The famous Prince Jen, who saved the empire, rescued his hapless brother, forced the barbarian surrender? Of course he would be killed!”

  Ziji opened his mouth, then closed it without speaking.

  Fuyin said, “Our friend has a decision to make. We are living through one of the oldest stories of Kitai.”

  “What do you mean? The imperial family?”

  “No. Army and court. If he refuses to withdraw he is in open rebellion as of today. All of you are. Our fear of our own soldiers made real.”

  Ziji looked at him. “And if he accepts, we surrender half of Kitai.”

  “That is what this is,” said Fuyin. “There is probably more I don’t know. Be glad we are not Daiyan.”

  HE FOUND HIMSELF THINKING about his father again. It was strange, or perhaps it wasn’t, how many of the roads you were on could lead you home in your thoughts.

  He hadn’t heard from Shengdu, from his father, in almost two years. Not surprising, given the times and the distance. He’d written. Told them where he was, what he was doing, knowing it would be terribly outdated when read.

  In the last letter to reach him his father had written that they were all well and that he was greatly honoured to still retain his position as a clerk in the yamen under a new sub-prefect.

  He was the senior clerk, Daiyan knew, and the yamen would fall into disarray without him, but his father would never write that. He’d probably never allow himself to think it.

  He must be greatly changed now. An old man? A year had aged Fuyin, what would the tumble of years have done to his father? His mother? He had a sudden memory of how she used to put a hand on his head then give his hair a tug, impatiently, loving him.

  He had been a boy when he rode out. Goi
ng farther from home than he ever had in his life. On a horse! All the way to Guan Family Village, where someone had been murdered! He could conjure up the excitement he’d felt, the fear of shaming himself, his family. His father.

  You lived your life, in the teachings of the Master, to never shame your parents. Ren Yuan had lived that way, with an unforced sense of responsibility.

  He’d hoped his clever younger son might be a scholar, bringing so much pride to all of them in that. He’d paid money that wasn’t readily available to a teacher that young Daiyan might have a chance to pursue a destiny that—who could know?—might lead him to the examinations. Perhaps one day to stand in the distant presence of the emperor. A father could go happily to join his ancestors if he knew he’d made that possible for his son.

  Daiyan looked up. He’d been here for some time, lost in thought, staring blankly at the grass and some late wildflowers. The sun was on the very edge of the horizon, preparing to descend and bring the dark. The star of the Queen Mother of the West was above it, bright, always bright, as she stood on the terrace of her home and looked out, shining, on the world.

  West was his home, too. West was his father.

  He was what he had been raised to be. Your path in life (through marshes, over hills, across so many rivers) might have you do things that did not make you proud. But you knew—he knew—what he was, what Ren Yuan needed him to be, to the last of his days.

  Fuyin had said that he didn’t know everything about the treaty just made. Daiyan thought he could guess at another part of it. It surprised him sometimes, how much he could see. Perhaps he was, after all, not just a soldier with a bow and sword. He remembered the old prime minister at Little Gold Hill, a spark that had passed between them. Recognition? Could a blind man recognize you?

  That one could, he thought.

  You needed to be cold as Hang Dejin had been, hard, sure of yourself. You needed to want power and, perhaps more than anything else, believe no one but you could properly wield it. You could be a good man or not, live with honour or not, but you needed to want so very much to stand beside the throne.