by Jeff Wheeler
Damanhur’s eyes were like daggers.
The wiry man spoke a few more words to the big leader, who nodded and gestured to where Rowen knelt, bound and still bloody.
“What is your name?” the wiry man asked, standing in front of Rowen.
The prince grimaced and said nothing.
“You are Prince Rowen,” said the wiry man with eagerness.
“No, his name is Wuren!” Damanhur said angrily. “He’s part of my ensign.” The smell of the lie stung Bingmei’s nose.
“Then he’s deceived you,” said the wiry man. “But I think not. You’re lying. I know him. I know his face and his voice, if he’d but speak. No?” He snorted and then chortled. “Jiukeshu will take him to the emperor. He’s coming to Sajinau, you know. He knows all the secret passes around the palace. We were set here to guard and prevent escape. How pleased Lord Echion will be to learn who my master has caught.” He rubbed his hands together.
“What will become of us?” Damanhur said heatedly.
“You have a choice, bold one. My master respects you for your skill and courage. He could use you as a leader once you’ve proven your loyalty. None of your ensign will be harmed if you join us. Lord Echion will give us the cities he conquers. The Qiangdao will rule. Join us and partake. Or you’ll be slaves working on the Death Wall.” He shrugged. “It makes no difference to us.”
“Tell your master,” Damanhur said, “that I would come with him to greet Lord Echion.”
The wiry man wrinkled his nose. He muttered some guttural words.
Jiukeshu laughed and responded curtly.
“The great Jiukeshu says you have not earned the right to behold the greatness of Lord Echion. You have done nothing to prove yourself. Come, princeling. You will be quite valuable to our lord.”
Rowen tried to stand, but his bonds made it difficult. The wiry man grabbed his arm and helped him. Damanhur, his face roiling with conflict, stepped forward. The huge Qiangdao leader did the same, bringing out the chui once more, his lips twitching with suppressed malice. Damanhur was weaponless, and there were dozens of Qiangdao outside. Bingmei could smell his intentions. Would he truly sacrifice himself to try to save Rowen, despite knowing he would fail?
“No, my friend,” Rowen said, looking Damanhur in the eye. He shook his head slowly. “There is nothing more you can do for me. I will go.” He swallowed. “I’ve always wanted to meet him anyway.”
“A wise decision, Prince,” the wiry man sneered. He shoved him toward Jiukeshu by the entrance. “Your friends would be wise to do the same.”
Damanhur’s fists were tight, and he trembled with rage. Rowen turned back and looked at him. He nodded, trying to convey with his eyes that it would be all right, even though they all knew it would not. Then Rowen looked at Bingmei, and she felt something leak from his normally clenched heart. He gave her a little smile, and she felt tenderness wash over her. He’d guarded this particular emotion when he was around her. It was strange to smell something like honey amidst so much violence.
Bingmei closed her eyes, feeling like weeping. Her own emotions were confused and conflicted. Why had he revealed himself at such a moment? Why had he shown her the tenderness he’d so strongly protected?
Echion was cruel and pitiless. He would have no mercy on someone like Rowen, for beneath all the prince’s jealousy and bluster, she sensed he was good. As the prince left the cave, she felt in her bones that she would never see him again.
Alive.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Defiance at Sajinau
Darkness fell on the mountains, and with it came a bitter cold. Damanhur had been bound too, after the prince had been taken away. They were prisoners, caged by the rocky clefts and only protected somewhat from the wind. Qiangdao guards were stationed at the entrance, and food was brought to the guards but not to the prisoners.
A feeling of helplessness and hopelessness wrung inside Bingmei’s heart. She struggled with the ropes at her wrists but could not get them any looser. They were tight enough to hurt. Now that the terror of the attack was over, the horrible consequences before them, she wondered what had happened to Quion. Had he followed them up the trail and avoided capture? Or had he been caught back at the palace? Or, even worse, had he been killed? The mere possibility filled her with a crawling feeling of unease.
The worry in her heart for Rowen was a constant torment. What would Echion do to him? What would Prince Juexin do when he learned his brother was in captivity? Would he assume the worst, that Rowen had gone over to the enemy willingly?
She regretted her decision to sneak out of Sajinau with the others. At least her wig still concealed her identity. But how long would that last?
It was a cloudless night, and soon the sky was thick with stars. She looked for familiar constellations and waited for the rising of the moon. Although she was tired from the climb up the mountain, she could not sleep. Her heart was too full of pain. She tried again to wriggle against the bonds, and again failed. She slumped back against one of the boulders, sighing.
“Bring us some food at least,” Damanhur muttered in the dark.
One of the guards said something in response. They didn’t speak the same language.
“Food!” Damanhur barked.
One of the guards called out, and the spidery man was summoned. He came into the area where they were bound.
“The guards wanted me to warn you that if you cry out again, you’ll be beaten,” he said.
“Why won’t they feed us?” Damanhur said.
The man paused, then said, “The dead feel no hunger.”
“You’re going to kill us, then?”
“No, but they won’t waste food on a corpse. After the city has fallen, you’ll have the choice to join us. If you do, you’ll be fed. Hunger may help speed up your decision.” He chuckled darkly and left.
“I’m thirsty,” Damanhur muttered. None of them had been given water either.
They remained in quietude and soon, one by one, they fell asleep. Bingmei listened to the whistle of the wind through the rocks and breathed in the noxious stench of the Qiangdao, somehow worse for the sweetness of the mountain flowers blooming in cracks in the rocks. She bowed her head and began meditating, trying not to shiver with the cold. Her pack had been stripped away and taken by the Qiangdao. Someone else was enjoying her new bedroll. The thought disgusted her.
As her thoughts faded to the background, she felt a flare of power in her mind. The magic of the Phoenix Blade was being summoned. It was still back in Sajinau, but she felt part of herself yanked away to the darkened palace. She saw Muxidi, blade in hand, roaming the halls.
The connection between them was weaker than before because of the distance. But she sensed he was following it like a spider creeping on a thread.
“Bingmei!”
She gasped, drawing breath, the connection severed. Damanhur had called out to her. This time, the strange prickling sensation in her fingers was a hundred times worse. She felt as cold as if she’d spent the night outside in the season of the Dragon of Night.
“Are you unwell? You stopped breathing.”
She heard the guards grumbling, and one of them roused and stood. They’d been asleep on their duty. A shadow-faced man entered the little prison. He barked something and then raised a stick and started beating Damanhur. The master twisted and tried to keep the blows from landing on his head. She could do nothing more than watch, rage and helplessness coursing through her. This was her fault. Damanhur grunted as the wood struck him repeatedly, and then he collapsed on the ground. She smelled the outrage of his ensign. She shared it.
As the shadow-faced man retreated back to the opening, holding his stick on his knees, he hawked and spat. His face was just barely visible in the moonlight.
“I’m sorry,” Bingmei whispered.
“Good. I’m . . . warmer now,” Damanhur grunted. “I was . . . worried. Thought you’d died again.”
“I did,” Bingmei said soft
ly. “The other Qiangdao is coming. The one with the Phoenix Blade. He knows where I am.”
“That’s bad news,” Damanhur whispered back. “We have to escape.”
“How?” Bingmei said with despair.
“I’m still working it out,” he answered. “Now hush, before he gives me another round.”
They fell silent, and she listened again to the lonely wind. And smelled the slumber of the Qiangdao and their fetid dreams. And felt the man with the Phoenix Blade coming for her.
Bingmei did fall asleep eventually and awoke at the cry of a mountain bird. She saw through the gaps in the boulders the image of an eagle soaring past. How she longed to borrow its wings. Her muscles were cramped, her wrists swollen from the rough rope that bound them. The Qiangdao camp was rousing, and no one stood at the mouth of the cave. They were huddled together outside, eating strips of meat that had been cooked and cured. Some of the men had leather bladders they drank from, and her throat clenched at the sight of water dribbling off chins and falling wasted on the dirt.
In the light, she saw the scabbed faces of the other members of Damanhur’s ensign. Huqu looked especially bad, although Damanhur had a bruise on his cheek. He glared at the men gathered outside, and she smelled the desire for vengeance in his heart, bubbling like a sour-smelling stew. She closed her eyes and tried to find the presence of the blade. She realized with dread that it was coming closer. She felt its presence on the mountain. He’d been picking his way up the trail in the dark.
She looked at Damanhur worriedly. “He’s coming,” she whispered.
Damanhur nodded. “You still can jump, can’t you?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Because my hands are bound. I have a little meiwood charm in my pocket. That is what gives me the power.”
“Then we need to get you loose,” Damanhur said. “You’ll have to leave the rest of us behind. If you die, we have no hope at all.”
“I’ve tried. I can’t loosen anything.”
Damanhur frowned. “Shift so that you’re facing the doorway. Huqu, wriggle up behind her. See if you can help. You’re closer. Hurry.”
After some grunting and movement, she felt Huqu against her back. She could see, from her angle, a portion of the Death Wall atop a distant mountain. It looked so far away. Not that she was thinking of going there. No, she regretted what had happened here, bitterly, but she still didn’t want to die. She would hide in the mountains. Forage for food. And, above all, she would avoid involving anyone else. She didn’t want anyone to be harmed because of her.
She felt Huqu’s fingernail dig into the side of her hand, and she hissed in pain.
“Sorry,” he said. Stretching the ropes binding his own wrists, he maneuvered his fingers around her bindings and scraped at them with a fingernail, like a mouse scratching with its tiny teeth.
The men gathered outside began to talk excitedly to one another. Then the spidery man appeared in the makeshift doorway, licking grease from his fingers. Bingmei pushed herself backward a bit, nudging Huqu. She felt his back stiffen.
“We can’t let you miss the fun. Come and watch the fall of Sajinau. Lord Echion comes.”
Several brutes entered the cleft and dragged everyone to their feet. Bingmei’s bonds felt just as tight as before. As she staggered, her knees aching, she brushed her wrists against the jagged edge of the cleft wall. The prisoners emerged together, the breeze making Bingmei shiver with cold. A little blue mountain flower poked out of the ground ahead, lovely to look at, but it was trampled by the boot of a Qiangdao. Her heart ached as she passed the crushed petals.
The prisoners were walked, surrounded, up the slope a little way until they crested the pass. It was a beautiful morning, the dark green trees stark against the white patches of snow. She could see the entire city of Sajinau below, hazy with the morning smoke of a thousand cookfires. The waters of the fjord were dark and deep, and looking down the edges, she could see the burning from the watchtowers. There were no ships in the fjord, not a single one. All had been moored at the docks of Sajinau.
“The fires are burning, and none of the ships have been destroyed,” Damanhur muttered smugly. “He hasn’t won yet.”
A Qiangdao punched him in the ribs for talking. Damanhur grunted, but he didn’t speak again.
The spidery man held up a single hand, palm outward. “There!” he pointed toward the fjord in the distance.
Bingmei squinted, not sure what she was seeing.
Until a ship sailed into view, rounding the edge of the mountain that dipped into the waters of the fjord. Her jaw dropped in awe and dread. It was at least six times larger than any junk she’d ever seen. There were so many masts she couldn’t count them.
Damanhur let out a pent-up breath, and she felt his astonishment. His dread. The Qiangdao began chuckling, some laughing boldly, and they all pointed to the massive ship entering the strait leading to Sajinau.
In its wake came a curtain of fog.
All the way atop the mountain, she heard the boom and shudder of a catapult down below. A heavy stone flew from the tower nearest the massive ship. The stone fell short, landing with a huge splash in the fjord. She could almost see the ant-like men wriggling around in the tower, loading another missile. The mist-wreathed ship lumbered on, coming closer as they prepared another assault. A second stone was heaved from the catapult. She could hear the crack of timbers, the groan of ropes. The stone landed with a splash, missing.
And then she watched as the fog began to creep up the mountainside. She struggled against her bonds, gazing with horror as the fog climbed up the mountain, its movement and progression almost intelligent. The guffaws of the Qiangdao chilled her blood as they eagerly anticipated the defenders’ deaths.
And then another set of sails appeared amidst the fog. If anything, this ship was even bigger than the first.
“Another one?” Huqu gasped.
The fog reached the first watchtower, and all fell silent. She could almost sense the deaths as they happened, the victims collapsing with a single sigh escaping their lips in unison. Their expressions placid in death. The first watch fire snuffed out, darkening the side of the mountain once again. The fog continued to swirl across the mountainside. It encroached on each side of the fjord, and one by one, she watched as the other watchtowers were overrun. The fires were all quenched. Not a single boulder had come near the enormous ships. There were three, then four. Sadness welled up in her heart. She felt like crying, but she held her tears back.
Prince Juexin had thought they could survive a siege for years. His heart had not understood the depth of evil they stood against.
The first titan ship approached Sajinau. The men on deck waved and cheered as they approached the shore.
“Look! Look!” the spidery man said, waving his finger. “They’re too big to dock at the wooden wharves. Look! The stone wharves come to meet them!”
Out of the fjord rose an ancient stone quay, something that had been submerged for centuries. Even from a distance, Bingmei could see the magic rippling across the stone as the animal sigils came to life. The quay was on the south side of the city where only a few scattered homes dwelled. Vulnerable to the forefront of Echion’s attack.
The first of the massive vessels came up alongside the stone quay.
Damanhur shoved his way closer to the spidery man. “You knew they were coming today?” he said, his voice throbbing with concern.
The fellow grinned. “Lord Echion said his arrival would be heralded by the lighting of the signal fires of Sajinau. He will give the people of Sajinau a chance to be slaves. If they refuse, the fog will kill them all. And we will inherit the city, just as he promised.”
Damanhur stared down the mountainside. He was trying to be strong, but she felt his composure cracking. He blinked, watching his city about to be overthrown. What would Prince Juexin do? What could he do? She wished she could reach into her pocket, that she could flee the scene unfol
ding before her eyes. The Qiangdao were all watching the tragedy unfold with open fascination. She could smell their greed, their desire for plunder, their desire to ravage and destroy. It made her sick to her stomach.
From the trail lower down, she saw three men struggling up the mountainside. They were dressed like Qiangdao. Her heart quailed. She tried to tug free of her bonds, but they wouldn’t give.
“Who are they?” one of the Qiangdao men said, pointing.
The spidery man frowned and looked. “I don’t know. It’s not Jiukeshu. Ready your weapons!”
Her view was completely blocked by the guards, who pushed her and the others away as they brandished their blades, spears, and other weapons.
Bingmei could smell their hunger for violence, their rising desire to kill. The sight below had incited them.
“Who are you? Why are you here?” the spidery man demanded.
“I am Muxidi of the Phoenix Blade,” said a gruff voice that Bingmei instantly recognized. Amidst the terrible smells, she could also smell a new strain of dishonesty. The newcomer reeked of it. “You are ordered to bring your prisoners down to Sajinau.”
It wasn’t the man who had killed her parents.
It was Jiaohua, the head of the Jingcha.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Falling
Bingmei recognized the voice, could smell the lie, yet still she didn’t understand what was happening. Was Jiaohua a traitor to his king? Had he been in league with the Qiangdao all along?
Or was it the Qiangdao he had deceived?
She could still sense the presence of the Phoenix Blade, but it wasn’t near.
“Whose orders?” snapped the spidery man.
“What do you think, fool?” shouted Jiaohua. “Whose boats have come to seize Sajinau!”
“Lord Echion sent you?” asked the spidery man in confusion. “Why?”
“You are a dolt. Come down to the foot of the mountain. That is where Lord Echion will reward us all.”
