“Don’t worry about it. Pity I was busy; I’d have liked to have watched.”
“It was tedious.”
“Which part?”
“All of it. No, just the parts involving Altan. Most of it.”
Laughing, Esen stretched for the bag of airag. The movement pulled his robe askew and Ouyang caught a brief flash of the shadow between his thighs. He felt his usual sick fascination at the sight. A perfect male body, lived in so casually—its owner never even having given a thought to its wholeness. His mind flinched from any comparison between it and his own mutilated shell.
Not noticing Ouyang’s distraction, Esen poured them both drinks. “What of the other battalions?”
Ouyang gave his report. Over the years they had developed a format, which had evolved into something more like a ritual. He enjoyed the feeling of Esen’s lazy, pleased attention on him; the familiar sight of him playing with the beads in his hair as he listened.
When he finished Esen said, “My thanks. How would I manage without you?”
“If you asked Altan’s opinion: perfectly well.”
Esen groaned. “I can’t get rid of him; his father is too important.”
“He’s not stupid. You could probably train him up as a replacement general over the next ten years. Fifteen years.”
“I couldn’t bear it,” Esen said theatrically. His smile happened mainly around his eyes; firelight shone on his barely parted lips. “Don’t leave me.”
“Who else would have me?”
“That’s a promise; I’ll keep you to it.”
“Do I ever joke?”
“Ha! Nobody would ever accuse you of it.” Then, as Ouyang rose to leave: “But won’t you stay awhile longer to talk? I can’t understand why you have to put that awful bare ger of yours so far away. How can you enjoy being alone all the time?”
Esen never could grasp why Ouyang might choose to keep himself apart, and why he lived with an austerity that bordered on monasticism. Most men who had risen so dramatically in station delighted in luxury, and Ouyang knew Esen would have gladly given him anything he wanted. But what did a eunuch soldier need other than weapons and armor? Ouyang thought of the abbot’s scorn, Altan’s curses. Creature. Thing. A tool that needed nothing, had no desires of its own.
Esen was giving him a hopeful look. Handsome, charming Esen, who was never refused. Ouyang’s stomach twisted. But it was only the drink; he had never had a tolerance for strong wine. “It’s late, my lord.”
He suppressed a guilty feeling at Esen’s disappointment. But they would be on the road tomorrow, and Esen was right that Ouyang’s armor—and himself by extension—stank. After tonight there would be no further opportunities for bathing until Anfeng, and victory.
* * *
The drums sounded. As Ouyang stood at the head of the assembled army, Esen emerged from his ger in his ceremonial armor. His cape was silver fur, which flattered his browned skin. His beard had been trimmed so the column of his throat stood clear and smooth. He strode forwards like a groom to his wedding day, reddened by the dawn light. A warm propitious breeze, unusual for this time of year, carried with it the smells of metal and horses.
Ouyang waited, sixty thousand men at his back. His mirror armor had been polished until it blazed even under the lowering sky. The battlefield beacon that men looked to, or fled in terror.
As Esen drew close Ouyang sank to his knees. Esen’s boots paused by his head. Ouyang cried out, his head bowed over that noble instep, “My lord! Give your praise to my lord, the son of the Prince of Henan!”
“Praise the son of the Prince of Henan!” the voices cried.
“My lord! Your army stands ready.”
He felt Esen stand straighter, taking in the sight of the massed army. As Ouyang knelt the faint sounds of jingling and creaking washed over him. Even an army standing perfectly still makes a noise. He could see it in his mind’s eye: the columns of men covering the plain; the tens of thousands of identical soldiers, receding into an indistinguishable billow of dark metal. A forest of pikes, and above them the endless rows of banners, the pure blue of a flame or the cloudless steppe sky, that heralded the might of the Mongols’ empire of the Great Yuan.
“Stand, my general.” Rising, Ouyang was lit by Esen’s smile. “Your army pleases me. As it pleases me to reward you for it.” Esen gestured to an aide. Gift in hand, his smile turned to a smirk. Private and pleased, teasing. He said, “As soon as I beheld her, I knew immediately to whom she was suited.”
The gift was a black mare, her neck almost as thick as a stallion’s. She swiveled her ears towards Ouyang and whickered the odd greeting that animals gave when meeting him for the first time. She was ugly and powerful and magnificent—and to a people for whom horses were the highest and most treasured good, a gift of kings. Ouyang regarded her with a pang of sadness. It was only ever Esen who thought Ouyang deserving of reward. Who refused to see what everyone else saw.
Their bare hands, exchanging the reins, brushed.
“Ride beside me, my general.” Esen mounted his own horse and gazed out. In a ringing voice, he said, “Great army of the Yuan! Forces of the Prince of Henan! Move out!”
Ouyang called the order; it was picked up and repeated by each commander of ten thousand men, each subcommander of a thousand men, each leader of a hundred men. Their voices formed into a flocking and swooping chorus, an echoed song thrumming in a canyon. All at once the mighty army began to move. The light-swallowing columns flowed across the land; the metal crushed the grass and sent up a wave of earthen smell. And the restless banners flew above them: Lord Esen and General Ouyang, side by side at the head of the army of the Great Yuan on its march to the Red Turbans and Anfeng.
6
ANFENG, SOUTHERN HENAN, ELEVENTH MONTH
Anfeng, the capital of the Red Turban rebels, was a miserable place in the rain. The girl Ma Xiuying trudged umbrella-less through the mud in the direction of Prime Minister Liu’s palace. It was a summons everyone had been waiting for: the Prime Minister was finally going to choose the Red Turbans’ new general. Ma felt a sick wrench at the thought. Her father, General Ma, had led the rebels to so many victories over the Yuan’s southern cities that everyone had come to regard him as infallible. And then, suddenly, he had not only lost, but been killed. Somehow, Ma thought bitterly, none of his trusted men had been there when he had needed them. She imagined her father coming face-to-face with the Prince of Henan’s eunuch general and finding himself alone. Betrayed. She knew without needing to know that it had been the Prime Minister’s doing. Ever since the discovery of the Prince of Radiance, Prime Minister Liu had changed. The Prince of Radiance’s promise of victory over the Yuan had made him paranoid. The greater he dreamed his power would be, the more he saw aspirations to his power in everyone else. General Ma had disagreed with the Prime Minister two days before he left to face the Prince of Henan’s forces. And now he was dead.
As Ma rounded the corner she caught sight of a familiar tall figure striding ahead in the drizzle. Hardly someone to buoy the spirits, but familiarity was good enough. “Guo Tianxu!” she called, picking up her skirts and running. “Let me walk with you.”
“Walk yourself,” her betrothed retorted, speeding up. Commander Guo was only twenty-two, but the constant action of his eyebrows swooping crossly over his nose had already worn three vertical lines between them like the word “river.” Within Anfeng he was known as Little Guo, which he hated. His father, the Red Turban government’s Right Minister, had the privilege of being the original Guo. “You’re too slow.”
“If you’re that worried about being late for the Prime Minister, maybe you should have left earlier,” Ma said, annoyed.
“Who’s worried?” Little Guo stopped with bad grace. “I just can’t stand walking with short people. And even if I were late, do you think the Prime Minister could start the meeting without me? Let him wait.”
Ma glanced around hastily to see if anyone else had heard. “A
re you crazy? You can’t speak about the Prime Minister with that kind of disrespect.”
“I’ll say what I like. And don’t you tell me what not to say.” Perhaps because Ma had been given into the keeping of the Guo household too many years ago, her relationship to Little Guo was less like an engagement and more like the hostile interactions between siblings from different wives. Resuming a brisk pace, Little Guo said, “It’s a pity about General Ma, but it’s past time we had some new ideas on how to take this rebellion forward. This is my chance to put them into action.”
Ma said slowly, “Are—you going to be the next general?” It made sense and it didn’t. Little Guo was neither the most experienced nor most talented of the Red Turban commanders, and everyone but he knew it.
“Who else should it be? The Prime Minister has already promised it to my father.” He rounded on Ma. “What, don’t you think I’m capable?”
“It’s not that. It’s just that the Prime Minister has his own ideas about strategy. If you come in wanting to make a mark with all your own ideas—” Remembering her father, Ma felt sick again. “Don’t be too ambitious, Guo Tianxu.”
“The Prime Minister probably disagreed with your father’s idea because he knew it wouldn’t work. And it didn’t! He knows good ideas when he hears them. And anyway, we have the Prince of Radiance now. As long as we show Heaven we’re worthy of its Mandate, how can we lose?”
“We had the Prince of Radiance when my father was defeated,” Ma said dully. She knew the presence of the Prince of Radiance on earth promised the beginning of a new era, perhaps even a better one. But if her father being killed was an indication of the kind of change that would be required to get them there, they should all be terrified.
A blare of sound surprised them. A crowd had formed in the middle of the street. Taut with interest, it compressed around a figure buoyed at shoulder height. Then the crowd exploded and the figure came surging forth: not on shoulders, but horseback. Incongruously, it had the shaved head and gray robes of a monk. The horse ricocheted down the street, barging into stalls and provoking a tirade of curses; the crowd’s interest reached fever pitch; and then the horse dug in its feet and deposited its baggage into a mud puddle. The crowd screamed with laughter.
The horse, displeased, trotted towards Ma. She stuck her hand out and caught its bridle.
“Hey!” Little Guo shouted, striding over. “You useless turtle eggs!” Seeing their commander, the men lapsed into guilty silence. “You! Yes, you. Bring that—person—here.”
The monk was fished from the puddle and placed, not roughly, in front of Little Guo. He was young and wiry, with a memorable face. Too broad on top and too sharp below, it resembled that of a cricket or praying mantis. “The Buddha’s blessings upon Commander Guo,” he said in a light voice, bowing.
“You,” Little Guo said brusquely. “What’s your purpose in Anfeng?”
“This monk is just a clouds and water monk.” A wandering monk, not attached to any particular monastery or temple. “Just passing through. It’s nice to see people again, after the countryside.” The monk’s eyes smiled. “Have you noticed that these days, the people in the countryside aren’t really the kind you want to meet?”
“Do you take me for an idiot, to think you’re a real monk?” Little Guo glanced at the horse. “Caught with your hands on Red Turban property. I guess that makes you a thief.”
“If this monk had managed to get his hands involved, he’d probably have stayed in the saddle longer.”
“So a bad thief, then.”
“We were gambling,” the monk said, the smile in his eyes intensifying. He spoke with the educated, self-conscious diction you’d expect from a monk—which only increased the likelihood that he wasn’t. “This monk happened to win.”
“Cheated, more like. Which makes you—oh, a thief.”
“This monk thought he was just lucky,” the monk said mournfully.
“Let me remind you what happens to thieves here.” Little Guo jerked his head at Anfeng’s earthen wall. “That.”
The monk took in the row of heads on spikes. His eyes widened. “Ah. But this monk really is a monk.” Then he fell to his knees. Ma thought he was begging for his life, or perhaps crying, but then she heard the words. He was chanting.
“Oh, for—” said Little Guo, his face creasing in irritation. He reached for his sword, but before he could unsheathe it Ma dashed forwards and grabbed him by the elbow.
“He is a monk! Listen!”
Little Guo gave her a poisonous look and extricated his arm. “He’s just farting through his mouth.”
“Fart—it’s the Heart Sutra!” Ma hissed. “How can you not know that? Think, Guo Tianxu. If the Prince of Radiance is a sign that we have Heaven’s favor, how long do you think that will last if you go around executing monks?”
“You know the sutras and you’re not a monk,” Little Guo said sourly.
“Look at his robe! And do you think he branded his own head for the fun of it?” They stared at the chanting monk. His bowed head bore a grid of round scars, as though someone had laid a red-hot beaded placemat on it. His young face was lit with concentration and tension. For a moment Ma thought the tension was fear, until his dark eyes slid across and met hers. That look, fearless, jolted her. It was then that she recognized the tension for what it really was. It was certainty: the consuming, almost religious focus of someone who refuses to believe that the outcome will be anything other than what he desires.
Little Guo, observing the crowd’s credulous expressions as they watched the monk, underwent a visible struggle: the desire to not lose face warring with concern for his future lives. “Fine,” he said. Ma winced at his tone; Little Guo was the proverbial hardheaded person who wouldn’t cry until he saw the coffin, and developed grudges when cornered. To the monk, he said, “You think this is a place for useless people? This is an army; everyone here fights. I hope your monastic vows don’t prohibit it.”
The monk stopped chanting. “And if they do?”
Little Guo regarded him for a moment, then strode to the nearest unit leader, grabbed his sword, and flung it at the monk. The monk, fumbling, promptly dropped it in the puddle. Little Guo said with bitter satisfaction, “If he insists on staying, put him in the vanguard!” and stomped off.
That was his revenge, of course. The vanguard, made up of the most worthless recruits, existed almost solely to absorb the rain of Mongol arrows that started any confrontation. It was certain death for the monk, and not even Heaven could blame Little Guo for that.
The crowd dispersed, leaving the monk scraping mud off his robes. Ma saw he was no taller than she was, and as thin as a bamboo stalk. It was strange to realize he was barely more than a boy; it didn’t fit with what she’d seen in him.
“Esteemed monk,” she said, handing him the reins, “maybe next time you should learn to ride before winning a horse.”
The monk looked up. Ma felt a second jolt: his face was so purely sunny that she realized she must have been mistaken, before. There was no intensity there at all—it didn’t even seem like he knew he’d avoided one death only to receive another.
“Is that an offer of assistance?” he asked, apparently delighted. “Or—but you can ride?” He assessed Ma’s pancake-shaped face, then her big feet. “Oh! You’re not a Nanren. You’re one of those Semu nomads, of course you can.”
Ma was surprised. Of course she was Semu: her father had been a general of the Yuan, and generals were either Mongol or from the Semu caste of steppe nomads and western peoples. In the whole Great Yuan there was only one Nanren general, and everyone knew who that was. So the monk was right, but he had seen it in a glance.
He was beaming at her. “This humble student’s name is Zhu, esteemed lady teacher. Please give him your instruction!”
The sheer effrontery of it made her laugh. “Too bold! Aiya, so much trouble. Let me tell you something, Master Zhu. Just take your horse and leave. Don’t you think you’ll stay
alive longer that way?” Shaking her head, she gave the horse a pat (it tried to bite her), and walked off.
Behind her, there was squawking: the monk getting dragged along by the horse. She felt a brief throb of pity. Whether in the Red Turban vanguard, or wandering the bandit-filled countryside, what chance did an innocent clouds and water monk have of survival? But then again—in the clash of rebels against empire that was all Ma had ever known, nobody’s survival was ever guaranteed.
* * *
Ma stood at the back of the Prime Minister’s throne room, cradling a teapot. Since Anfeng had never been a capital before the Red Turbans occupied it, it wasn’t a real throne room—and it certainly wasn’t in a real palace. When the rebels who would become the Red Turbans had taken Anfeng from the Yuan years ago, much of it had been burned, including its governor’s residence. As a result Prime Minister Liu Futong ruled the movement from a large but dilapidated two-story wooden house with several courtyards. The throne room had originally been an ancestral shrine, and it still smelled of incense and dried tangerine peel. White mold bloomed on the dark walls. On the dais at the front of the room, the Prime Minister sat on the smaller of the two thrones. Above the frayed collar of his gown his white beard and darting eyes gave him the paranoid, vicious air of a winter ermine. Beside him sat the Prince of Radiance.
In comparison to the Prime Minister, the material incarnation of light and fire shone as brightly as a freshly minted coin in a beggar’s hand. A small child of seven or eight, encased in a crisp ruby gown that seemed to glow from within, his presence was ageless. His gaze, reaching them from behind the many strings of jade beads hanging from his hat, was luminous; his smile as graceful and unbending as a statue’s. Ma knew he was a real child; he breathed; but in the many months he had been with the Red Turbans, she had never so much as heard those beads click. That serene visage, unchanging but promising change, made her scalp swarm with ants. What did he think about as he sat there? Or did he not think at all, and was only empty: a conduit for the will of Heaven? She shuddered, and the lid on the teapot rattled.
She Who Became the Sun Page 9
