If he’d been thinking faster, Huang might have seen his brief advantage and taken the opportunity to change the direction of his thrust and stab downward, hitting the reinforced padding of the practice vest Zhao wore and scoring a hit. But seeing his opponent simply fall like a puppet whose strings had been cut unnerved Huang, and the confusion caused a momentary delay in his reaction.
That delay was all the opportunity Zhao needed to turn things to his advantage. Lying flat on his back, the bandit chief scooped up a handful of red sand and, without warning, threw it up into Huang’s face. In the still air, there was no wind to blow the sand aside, and most of it pelted into Huang’s face as Zhao had intended, gritting in his teeth, stinging his eyes, filling his nostrils.
Huang flailed back, momentarily blinded, tears streaming from his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand, trying to blink the sand from his watering eyes, while his other still held the hilt of his sword, its point aimed at the sky.
Before Huang knew what had happened, he felt himself falling to the ground, just as Zhao had done. But while the bandit chief’s fall had been directed and deliberate, Huang’s was simply the result of Zhao sweeping his legs out from under him with a sideswiping kick, knocking him off balance. Huang threw his arms out to either side, unsuccessfully trying to regain his footing, but it was too late. He thudded to the hard ground, his breath knocked from him. He’d lost hold of his sword somewhere and heard it clatter to the rocks a short distance off.
Huang felt a needle’s prick on his exposed neck and squinted through the tears and the grit to see Zhao standing over him, the red-bladed saber prodding Huang just below the jawline.
“See, Hummingbird? No rules.”
Huang’s cheeks stung red with embarrassment, but he managed a weak smile and nodded. As Zhao helped him to his feet, Huang wondered whether he shouldn’t send word to his parents in Fanchuan to clear out his old room and give away all his fencing trophies and medallions, considering that he’d been bested three falls out of four by a man with no formal fencing training whatsoever. Of course, Huang’s parents probably thought he was dead by now, after so many years without any word from him, so such a message might complicate matters more than Huang would like. It wasn’t that he bore his family any ill will; he just wasn’t in any hurry to see them again. Someday, perhaps, but not soon.
Huang was retrieving his blade, and preparing himself for a fifth bout with Zhao, when a bandit raced into the gulley, bringing word from Ruan and Jue that the convoy had been spotted.
“That’s enough play for today, I think,” Zhao said, sliding his own red saber into its scabbard. “Time to be back at work.”
As they walked up the gulley together, Zhao turned to Huang and fixed him with a familiar grin. “So tell me, Hummingbird: Which is more valuable, the soldier or the elephant?”
Huang shook his head, his expression rueful. He’d come to dread these little examinations, these past few years. “The elephant, I suppose,” he said, knowing there was no point in fighting it.
Zhao narrowed his eyes, still smiling. “Why?”
“Because he can move two points, while the soldier can move only one.”
Zhao raised a finger in triumph. “Are you forgetting the river?”
Huang sighed and shook his head again. “Oh, right. Well ...”
The river, of course, was not any body of water, no more than the elephant was an animal or the soldier a man. Huang had never seen a river outside a lithograph or an elephant outside a zoo. Instead the river was the blank strip that divided an elephant-chess board into two sections, and the soldier and elephant two varieties of playing pieces.
“The elephant is a useful defensive piece, sure,” Zhao went on, “but he can only advance as far as the river’s nearest bank. The soldier might only be able to move one point forward, but when he crosses the river, he’s promoted and can move horizontally as well, making him a much more dangerous opponent.”
“So the answer is the soldier?” Huang asked.
Zhao smiled. “What do you think?”
Huang was thoughtful. “I think it depends.”
It hadn’t been long after Huang had thrown in his lot with the bandits that he’d discovered that Zhao shared his passion for elephant chess, and in the quiet hours between forays, the two had taken to playing with a battered set that Zhao had brought with him to the Aerie, a relic of his previous life as a miner. Huang had originally expected to be able to beat the gruff bandit chief easily but had been surprised when Zhao had bested him four games out of five. Even now, years later, Zhao still won their games more often than he lost.
Zhao nodded. “It depends,” he agreed. They continued on for a moment, drawing nearer the channel where the others had gathered. “And what does that tell us about men and machines in combat?”
Zhao had recognized Huang’s talent for strategy in those early games and quizzed him on where he’d learned to play. Zhao himself had learned elephant chess from an old master who had ended his days working in the mines, but not before teaching a young miner named Zhao everything he knew about the game. When Huang explained that he’d been taught by his tutor, learning elephant chess instead of the military strategy with which he’d been tasked, Zhao had laughed. He said that Huang had learned more about military tactics than he’d realized from his strategy tutor, if only he’d learn how to apply it. And that had been the beginning of their impromptu examinations as the bandit chief tried to teach Huang how game tactics could be put into real-world practice.
Huang furrowed his brow, trying to apply the lesson about soldiers and elephants on the chessboard to men and machines in the real world.
“Perhaps,” he finally answered, “it means that a crawler is a useful asset, but there are places a crawler can’t go. A man on foot, in the right circumstances, can be a more powerful asset.”
Zhao nodded, his smile widening. “Sounds right to me.” He reached over and clapped Huang on the shoulder. “Now come on, let’s see what trouble the others have gotten up to.”
“So what do you think, Hummingbird?”
Huang and Zhao stood near the lip of the channel, looking down onto the lowlands below. They were shielded from view of those in the convoy, and although the crawlers were some distance away, Huang felt the almost unshakable urge to whisper, as though his words might be overheard.
Huang wasn’t entirely sure at what point he had become the chief’s sounding board for strategy, but it seemed to have been an outgrowth of their discussions about fencing and elephant chess. Zhao continued his little examinations, quizzing Huang about what the bandits should or shouldn’t do in given circumstances. The chief seemed to like his answers more often than not, so much so that in time Huang had become something of a de facto strategist, consulted whenever questions of tactics arose.
“Looks like the intelligence we received was correct,” Huang answered, peering at the line of crawlers in the near distance. “Minimal armament, no defensive posture . . . they aren’t expecting any trouble at all.”
“And why should they?” The voice was Ruan’s, who crouched against the cliff wall of the channel a few paces off. His eyes were narrowed in his skeletal face, and he regarded Huang coolly. “What are they carrying that anyone could possibly want? Compressor components? Elevator cabling? Emergency rations and bales of undergarments? Why would anyone in their right mind even consider raiding such a shipment?”
“Ruan?” Zhao said, turning the bandit’s name into a warning, with one word saying, Do you really want to keep talking?
“Well,” Huang said with a defensive shrug, “I’m sure there’s some use to which those things could be put. Doesn’t the Aerie’s air-filtration system need a new compressor?”
“That’s as may be,” Jue put in, shaking his head sadly, lips pursed and scar showing white against his tanned skin. “But our system uses an entirely different gauge than the mines do, and I don’t think these parts could be adapted to fit.”
He gave a weary smile and added, “But I wouldn’t mind a few dozen pairs of undergarments, myself. Would save on doing the wash.”
Ruan shot the scar-faced bandit a sharp look, then turned to glare at Huang once more.
“Well, Ruan?” Zhao asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “Is there something you’d like to say?”
The skeletal-faced bandit glared for another moment at Huang, and then his expression softened, fractionally, as he turned to the bandit chief and shook his head reluctantly. “No. No, I suppose there isn’t.”
“Well, enough then.” Zhao nodded and turned to Huang. “In that case, Hummingbird, I don’t see any reason not to put your plan in motion. You want to send word to the men down the line that we’re ready to move into position?”
Huang nodded, casting a quick uneasy glance in Ruan’s direction. Then he saw Jue’s supportive grin and smiled in return. He paused for the briefest moment, contemplative, and then hurried off to relay Zhao’s commands to the rest of the bandits arrayed up and down the line of the channel, their weapons primed and ready.
As he made his way up and down the line, giving the bandits their instructions, Huang could hear their voices following after him. None told him to his face what they thought of him and his position in the organization, but as soon as his back was turned they were much more forthcoming.
There was one, though, who was not shy about expressing his displeasure, especially when Zhao wasn’t around.
“You don’t fool me.”
Ruan blocked Huang’s way, his skeletal face twisted in a sneer, his arms folded over his chest.
“I need to pass, Ruan,” Huang said, his voice low but level.
“What you need,” Ruan said, unfolding his arms to reach forward and prod Huang in the chest, “is to keep your rutting mouth shut.”
Huang narrowed his eyes. A few years before, he had been the bandits’ disgruntled prisoner, and Ruan had been quick to argue for his speedy execution. Since then, he’d gone from being a reluctant pet to being a valued bandit and was now even something of a prized strategist, a close advisor to the chief. It seemed that Zhao held him in the same esteem as he did Ruan and Jue, and in recent months Huang had even begun to suspect that he might have eclipsed even them, as the bandit chief came more and more to value Huang’s own advice over all others, even when contradicted by his longtime lieutenants.
Huang wasn’t sure what he thought of the change in his status, but it was clear to him what Ruan thought of it.
“We aren’t your personal army, boy,” Ruan said, poking Huang again in the chest, “and if it was up to me, you’d be shoving your advice up your bunghole. Just how you’ve turned the old man’s head away from profit I’ll never know, but don’t think for a minute that you’ve fooled me.”
That the raids were more successful than ever, none could deny. With Huang’s instincts at strategy and formal training in the use of weapons augmenting Zhao’s tactics and more catch-as-catch-can alley-fighting style, the bandits had been gradually transformed from artless brawlers into formidable fighters, fierce and intelligent. But if the bandits’ encounters were more successful, seldom suffering casualties in the course of their raids, the bandits found that they were bringing ever less profit back to the Aerie after each foray.
And worse, when they were back in the safety of the Aerie, the bandits had been forced to adapt to a much more frugal existence. No longer did they indulge in the feasts of former days, trenchers piled high with food and endless jars of wine. Now they ate rations of rice and salted fish, drinking their wine watered if at all, and only occasionally enjoying the luxury of duck, or pork, or that rarest of treasures, beef.
Many of the bandits felt they knew precisely what their problem was, and just who was the author of these troubles. The difficulty, they felt sure, was that they were no longer living like bandits; they were now living like soldiers.
And it was all the fault of the man they called Hummingbird.
“Look, Ruan,” Huang said, keeping his voice low, “I don’t want to fight you. I just don’t see any point in wasting our lives in the pointless pursuit of plunder.”
“Pointless?” Ruan sneered. “Spoken like a true child of privilege who never worked a rutting day in his life.”
Huang’s hand twitched for his saber’s hilt, but he kept his arms at his sides. He couldn’t really blame Ruan for how he felt. Huang had changed things in the Aerie, these last seasons. But it wasn’t as if Huang had set out to make the bandits’ lives more difficult. What he had set out to do was to make their lives more meaningful.
“What good is it to get a few coins in your pocket,” Huang said, “if the army can come along the next day and take them right back from you? We need to fight smarter.”
Under Huang’s guidance, Zhao’s bandits were no longer driven by profit but by the desire to harass their enemies. It was because of Huang that the bandits now attacked military targets virtually to the exclusion of all others; and those few nonmilitary targets that found themselves the subject of the bandits’ attentions were those most closely allied with the military’s master, the governor-general—mine owners, shipping concerns, and so on.
Such a target was the convoy that the bandits now prepared to attack.
“This convoy is carrying matériel from the Far Sight Outpost north to the White Plains Station,” Huang went on. “In case you’ve forgotten, it’s White Plains that supplies the soldiers employed as strikebreakers all throughout the north. Without the supplies carried by this convoy, the garrison will be left unable to supply the necessary manpower, and the mine owners will be left without a shield of armed soldiers between themselves and the men and women whose lives are threatened every day by the unsafe working conditions down in the mines.”
“You may not have noticed it, boy,” Ruan sneered, “but we’re not working in a mine here, are we? We climbed up out of the dirt and found a better life. Why can’t we just leave the others to do the same?”
Huang regarded Ruan for a moment, then shook his head. “I wouldn’t let Zhao hear you talk like that.”
“Yeah?” Ruan reached up and rubbed the sharp point of his jaw. “Well, seems to me there’s a lot that Zhao won’t, or can’t, hear for himself. Like what a worthless waste you are, nor how you’re mucking up our good thing here. Seems that Zhao thinks the sun rises and sets on his little pet, and damn anyone who doesn’t agree.”
Huang shifted uneasily, not sure how to respond.
“Seems to me, though,” Ruan went on, “that Zhao won’t always be around. And come to that, he won’t live forever, will he? And if something were to happen to the chief, then . . . ?”
His lips drawn into a line, Huang shouldered past Ruan, shoving the skeletal bandit out of the way. “I don’t have time for this,” he said.
“I’d watch out, if I were you, Hummingbird,” Ruan called after his retreating back. “Zhao won’t be around forever, after all....”
When the main body of the convoy had drawn alongside the channel, Huang watched as a detachment of bandits surged over the rim, long knives flashing in the sunlight, bellowing at the top of their lungs. From entrenched positions along the edge of the channel, snipers opened fire with their long-barreled rifles.
That the sniper fire did little but plink off the light armor of the crawlers hardly mattered to Huang’s plans, nor did the fact that the bandits on foot—for all that they shouted themselves hoarse and spent all their energy running and waving their swords overhead—could hardly do much damage on an individual basis against large vehicles in motion. The snipers and the knife-wielding bandits were, in Huang’s carefully orchestrated plan, little more than distractions.
Even so, as distractions they fulfilled their tasks admirably. Faced with attackers on foot, the drivers of the convoy—as Huang had known they would—had slowed their crawlers’ forward progression and maneuvered the large vehicles into a rough circle of protection. Then it was time for the next phase of Huang
’s plan to be put into action.
Huang remembered another convoy, another ring of crawlers, with himself in the role of defender. It seemed odd, though somehow fitting, to find himself now in the opposite role.
“They’ve moved the crawlers into position,” Jue said, sliding back down the wall of the channel from his lookout post at the ledge, “just as you said they would. They can’t be more than a dozen paces off the mark.”
“Close enough.” Huang spared a nod, then motioned to Ruan. “Your men ready with the detonators?”
Ruan scowled but responded with a curt nod. “Just waiting for the chief’s word, is all.”
Huang felt the barb in Ruan’s words, even if no one else did. Zhao is still in charge here, the skeletal bandit was saying. He gives our orders, Hummingbird, not you.
Biting back the impulse to respond in kind, if perhaps less subtly, Huang turned from Ruan to Zhao, who stood with his eyes just above the lip of the channel wall, watching the bandits herd the crawlers into position. “The convoy is in place, Chief,” Huang said in clipped tones. “Waiting on your orders.”
Zhao allowed himself a grin and slid back down the channel wall to join the others at the base of the gulley. “Well done, Hummingbird.” He turned to Jue. “Call the men to their fallback positions.” Then to Ruan. “When the others are clear, order the detonators hit.”
Needing no further instruction, the two lieutenants nodded and hurried off to carry out Zhao’s orders.
“If this works, Ruan might never forgive you,” Zhao said in a low voice to Huang, smiling slightly. Huang raised an eyebrow, concerned, and Zhao explained. “He always did like getting his hands a bit dirty, if you take my meaning, and this plan of yours leaves him with little to do but conduct traffic. If we can take out an armed convoy with a few well-placed explosives and a bit of theater, Ruan might find himself without an opportunity to slake that damned bloodthirst of his.”
Iron Jaw and Hummingbird Page 15
