Daylight on Iron Mountain

by David Wingrove

  DAYLIGHT ON IRON MOUNTAIN

  1 Son of Heaven

  2 Daylight on Iron Mountain

  3 The Middle Kingdom

  4 Ice and Fire

  5 The Art of War

  6 An Inch of Ashes

  7 The Broken Wheel

  8 The White Mountain

  9 Monsters of the Deep

  10 The Stone Within

  11 Upon a Wheel of Fire

  12 Beneath the Tree of Heaven

  13 Song of the Bronze Statue

  14 White Moon, Red Dragon

  15 China on the Rhine

  16 Days of Bitter Strength

  17 The Father of Lies

  18 Blood and Iron

  19 King of Infinite Space

  20 The Marriage of the Living Dark

  DAYLIGHT ON IRON MOUNTAIN

  DAVID WINGROVE

  First published in hardback and trade paperback in Great Britain in 2011 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books.

  Copyright © David Wingrove, 2011

  The moral right of David Wingrove to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Hardback ISBN: 978-1-84887-831-0

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-84887-832-7

  ebook ISBN: 978-0-85789-432-8

  Printed in Great Britain

  Corvus

  An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.corvus-books.co.uk

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE Fireflies – Summer 2067

  PART FOUR Black Hole Sun – Summer 2067

  Chapter 12 An Interview With The Dragon

  Chapter 13 Amos

  Chapter 14 A Change Of Sky

  Chapter 15 Full Circle

  PART FIVE Daylight On Iron Mountain – Summer 2087

  Chapter 16 Facing Winter

  Chapter 17 The Seven

  Chapter 18 Postponements

  Chapter 19 The First Dragon Decides

  Chapter 20 Scattered Memories The Age Of Waste From

  Chapter 21 War In Heaven

  Chapter 22 Tigers And Butterflies

  Chapter 23 Beautiful And Imposing

  Chapter 24 Consequences

  Chapter 25 Daylight On Iron Mountain

  EPILOGUE Lilac Time – Summer 2098

  Character Listing

  Glossary Of Mandarin Terms

  Author’s Note And Acknowledgments

  For Rose Wingrove, née Jackson, my loving mother, with thanks for every year of life you’ve given me. Here is another for your shelves.

  PROLOGUE Fireflies

  SUMMER 2067

  You who are born in decay

  Dare not fly into the sun.

  Too dim to light a page,

  You spot my favourite robe.

  Wind-tossed, you’re faint beyond the curtain

  After rain, you’re sparks inside the forest.

  Caught in winter’s heavy frost,

  Where can you hide, how will you resist it?

  —Tu Fu, ‘Firefly’ ad 750

  1

  AT HUA CH’ING SPRINGS

  I was the summer of 2067, that bright, hot summer before the beginning of the American campaign. And it was there, in the green shadow of Li Mountain, in that most ancient of places, Hua Ch’ing Hot Springs, sixty li east of China’s ancient capital, Xi’an, that they met.

  Hua Ch’ing was an ancient place, even by Han standards. A sprawling summer palace, built into the green of the mountainside. First built on by the Chou more than two thousand years before, then followed by the Ch’in and Han, it was a place where Tang Dynasty emperors had once bathed, surrounded by courtiers and concubines, poets and politicians; a place of culture and long history.

  Here the great poet, Tu Fu, had written his reflective poems, thirteen centuries before. Poems which still had the freshness of the dew-touched dawn.

  There in the moon’s pale light on a clear and cloudless evening, beneath the ancient arch of the Fei Hung Ch’iao, ‘the Rainbow Bridge’, Tsao Ch’un floated on his back, naked as a newborn, looking up at the star-filled heavens.

  From where he lay, luxuriating in the warm, sulphur-scented water, he could see the Kuei Fei, the baths of the imperial concubines, and beyond them the Lung Yin waterside pavilion. The great Ko Ming emperor Mao had come here once, it was said, to speak with his arch enemy, Chiang Kai-shek, whom he had captured. Since which time, history had passed this haven by.

  Guards stood like dark statues beneath the locust trees that flanked the Springs, while in a chair nearby, on the platform of the Chess Pavilion, sat the great man’s friend and advisor, Chao Ni Tsu.

  This was Chao’s first visit to the Springs. He had spent the long afternoon dozing beside the pale green waters, in the shade of a silk umbrella, while Tsao Ch’un had climbed the steps that led up steeply through the trees, to visit the ancient temples that were hidden in the great tangle of green that was Mount Li.

  It was more than fifty years since Tsao had come here last, as an adolescent, back when his parents had been alive. Then it had been packed with tourists, endless specimens of ‘Old Hundred Names’ who had crowded into this place designed for emperors, for calm and contemplation. The common man, smoking a cigarette and hawking up phlegm. There, six deep wherever you turned, smelling of sweat and cheap cologne. How he had loathed coming here back then. Hated the crowds, the endless gap-toothed peasants. But today…

  Chao Ni Tsu smiled at the memory of Tsao Ch’un’s face as he had looked about him earlier, his eyes drinking in the simple peacefulness, the pure, unchanged beauty of the place. Yes, and the emptiness. The lack of ‘Old Mud Legs’, spoiling things just by being there.

  He had ordered his guards to form a cordon about the place for the duration, then like Ming Huang himself, had pulled on his dragon robes and gone inside, like the great emperors of old.

  A long silence had fallen between the two, as if the gravity of what they had been discussing had become too weighty for further discussion. But now that silence was broken, not by the man who floated beneath the ancient bridge, like a sleeping tiger, but from the one who was prone to speak but scantly in normal circumstances. Scantly and hesitantly, afraid to commit his thoughts to utterance. Only now he did, leaning towards the dark shape in the water just below him.

  ‘It is as you said, Tsao Ch’un. Our response must be dramatic and immediate and… lasting.’

  Tsao Ch’un grunted. ‘You think I am right then, Brother Chao? You think we should nuke them and have done with it?’

  ‘I think…’ Chao hesitated. ‘I think they have made it very hard for you to follow any other path. I think… well, to be candid, I think we have two choices: To destroy them entirely, root and branch; or to license their religion. To allow it into our City in a milder, sanctioned form.’

  ‘Allow it!’ Tsao Ch’un roared, the water about him growing agitated as he turned to face his old compani
on. ‘No, Chao Ni Tsu! Mao was right. Religion’s a disease, a malaise of the brain. It makes madmen of us all! If only we could cure it, neh? Give the bastards a pill and flush it from their minds!’ He sighed. ‘The gods help us, Master Chao! If only they’d be reasonable.’

  Chao chuckled. ‘Reasonable?’

  Tsao Ch’un reached out, grasping the carved marble edge of the steps beside the bridge.

  ‘You know what I mean. You’d think they’d see what was happening. That they’d recognize where the tide of history is taking us. See it and adapt, not fight it tooth and nail. You’d think…’

  Chao Ni Tsu shook his head. ‘Think what? That they’d realize that you’re more powerful than them and that they cannot prevail? They know that, and it makes not a blind bit of difference. They would fight you to the last man anyway. Barbarians, that’s what they are. Next to them we are enlightenment itself. Besides, that’s not the reason why they’ve declared Holy War against you, Tsao Ch’un.’

  ‘No? Then what is?’

  ‘They do not think you have the nerve to nuke them.’

  Tsao Ch’un laughed. ‘Didn’t they hear?’

  ‘About Japan? No, old friend. And even if they did, they’d think it but a rumour. What, after all, would they have seen of it? No… they think that God is on their side. Allah, Jehovah… call him what you will… they truly believe in him. Insane, I know, but no amount of logical argument will free them from their madness. It is God’s will, so they say.’

  ‘God’s will…’ Tsao Ch’un spat angrily. ‘And meanwhile they send their suicide bombers against our outposts!’ He snorted. ‘I should just do it. Get it over with and move on. Only…’

  ‘Only what? Are you worried about the fallout?’

  ‘Is that a joke, Chao Ni Tsu?’

  Master Chao smiled in the darkness where he sat. ‘You must understand one thing, Tsao Ch’un. You cannot play games with these people. You might use words, trying to get through to them, but their answer is always a bullet or a bomb. They have no time for reason. Their passion is for gesture. For martyrdom.’

  ‘And ours?’

  ‘Is often the same, I agree. Only where we differ is that we want the world to move forward, not backwards. We want a world at peace, where all men might be given their chance. A world without conflict. And theirs? No, Tsao Ch’un. They would have us live in ancient times, by ancient laws. And ridiculously stupid laws at that! Laws formulated by tribes of desert nomads to suit their way of life. As for how they see us… well, we’re the heretics, as far as they’re concerned!’

  Tsao Ch’un was quiet a moment. Then, deciding to get out, he hauled himself up out of the silvered water in one swift movement and stood there naked beneath the moonlight, the water streaming from him.

  ‘Do you remember, Ni Tsu, back in the early days? Back in forty-four, when the long campaign had just began? When we first sent the Brigades out to do our work? How exciting it all was. How exhilarating. Now… well, I grow jaded, Chao Ni Tsu. I grow…’ He sighed, then drew his fingers through his long dark hair, combing it back. ‘I guess what I’m trying to say is that nuking them would feel like a failure, somehow. Oh, I know the arguments how many lives it would save. I know all that. But this… it seems much too facile an answer.’

  He turned as he said it, looking directly at Chao Ni Tsu.

  Master Chao shrugged. But he remembered it well. 2044… Those had been hard times, difficult times; times when it could all quite easily have gone wrong. Back then, only skill and cunning had kept them ahead of their enemies.

  Yes, and an untiring, unrelenting watchfulness.

  My skill and his cunning, he thought, fascinated by the physical creature that stood before him. Another would have called for a towel and clothes, but he did neither. He was content to be as he was: an animal that thought. Being such gave him an edge that others simply did not have.

  ‘I’ve asked Shepherd to come,’ Tsao Ch’un said, seeing how Chao was watching him, but not minding. ‘We’re meeting him in the old city, later this evening. We can decide then, neh?’

  And there it was, put off again for another hour or two. But they would have to make the decision soon. Before the great Jihad got under way. Then again, Shepherd would know what to do. He always did, unfailingly.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Tsao Ch’un asked, his voice strangely softer now that they had decided not to decide. Not to destroy the Middle East in one big blinding flash.

  Chao Ni Tsu nodded, then slowly hauled himself up out of his chair. He was getting old. His every movement told him as much. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘I could murder a haunch of gammon. With rice and cinnamon and…’

  He smiled, seeing how Tsao Ch’un’s face had lit up at the suggestion.

  ‘No wonder you’ve put on weight, Brother Chao. Not that you were ever slim.’

  ‘I can’t help it, Brother Tsao. I like my food. It was my mother’s fault. She fed me too well.’

  ‘The gods bless her souls.’

  ‘Are you not cold, Tsao Ch’un?’

  ‘Not at all, Chao Ni Tsu. The night air’s warm. You should try it. To have nothing between one and the world. To feel the air on one’s skin. There is no greater delight… unless it’s a woman.’

  ‘Or a plate of gammon and rice and cinnamon…’

  Two hours later, drowsy from too much food and definitely too much wine, Chao Ni Tsu settled in the corner of the chamber while Tsao Ch’un took his nightly reports.

  He did this every night, though not always at the same hour, speaking to his leading commanders in the field, making sure that all was well. Right now he was talking to Marshal Wei, who had set up his command post in Tehran.

  The war in West Asia had reached a strange impasse. Marshal Wei had subdued most of the territory from China to the border of Iraq, but there things had stalled, defying the marshal’s most strenuous efforts to make advances.

  Even so, Tsao Ch’un was pleased with Marshal Wei. He was a brilliant strategist. Without him the campaign would have lasted twice as long, for it was no easy task, fighting in such terrain. For the last six months he had rolled back his enemies mile by mile. Only now had they ground to a halt in the face of fanatical resistance.

  And now there was this small matter of the Jihad.

  Chao Ni Tsu smiled contentedly. It was pleasant to think that one was seated where the great Ming Huang, the Purple Emperor, had once sat. To imagine the Son of Heaven listening, perhaps, as his concubine, Yang Kuei Fei, played the lute for him or sang.

  Or bathed with him.

  He closed his eyes, imagining the sight. The old man and the beautiful younger woman, her flesh like olive perfection.

  ‘Are you good, old friend?’

  He felt Tsao Ch’un’s hand pressed gently but firmly on his shoulder. Half turning, he looked up at him.

  ‘I was thinking of the great emperor, Ming Huang and the beautiful Kuei Fei… Being here I could imagine it... could almost see them…’

  Tsao Ch’un grunted. ‘The old man was mad… to lose his empire over a woman!’

  It was true, Chao thought. To force one’s eldest son to divorce his young wife, then assign her to one’s own harem. And then to promote her family, against the wishes of his court. Only a man bewitched would have followed such a course. And what was the end of it all? He had been forced to have her killed, strangled by his chief eunuch, to pacify his enemies.

  Only it had not been enough to save things. An Lushan, Kuei Fei’s lover and Ming Huang’s general a Manchurian of common birth had finally overthrown him.

  Tsao Ch’un came round, squatting on his haunches just in front of Chao Ni Tsu. He had put on a loose-fitting cloak of midnight blue, and combed back his long, jet-black hair. He had been up all day since dawn, in fact but he did not look the least bit tired.

  Another might have abused his power. Might have spent his days in debauchery. But that was not Tsao Ch’un’s manner. He was no holy man when it came to women. In fact he
enjoyed women. But he had never let a woman control him, or manipulate him, or distract him. What he had, he always said, was an itch. And the only thing to do with an itch was to scratch it. Scratch it good and hard.

  ‘Amos has been delayed,’ he said, squeezing the old man’s knee fondly. ‘He’ll be here late morning now.’ Tsao Ch’un smiled. ‘And he reminded me…’

  Chao Ni Tsu frowned. ‘Reminded you?’

  ‘Yes, my humble friend. Reminded me. About your birthday. I’m sorry. I had forgotten. But look…’ He pulled out a bright red silken package from behind his back, like a conjurer presenting a fake bunch of flowers. ‘I have a gift for you!’

  ‘Old friend…’ Chao Ni Tsu sat forward, moved by the gesture, reaching out to take the package. ‘You really shouldn’t have…’

  He opened it, let the silk fall away, then caught his breath.

  ‘Kuan Yin!’

  It was an ancient piece, the size of a woman’s hand; a delicately carved figure of a wei ch’i player just the figure and the board, in pure white marble. Marble that seemed almost soft to the touch.

  Chao Ni Tsu stared and stared. It was beautiful, astonishingly beautiful. Perhaps the most beautiful thing anyone had ever given him. He put a finger to his eye, wiping the tear away.

  ‘Your kindness overwhelms me, brother.’

  ‘Good,’ Tsao Ch’un said, getting to his feet once more. For once, his face was lit with simple pleasure at Chao’s own delight. ‘Then let us get some sleep. Tomorrow is a fateful day, neh?’

  2

  BENEATH THE YELLOW EARTH

  The Mausoleum was huge, the great semi-transparent roof stretching away in all directions. In the shadows, down there beneath and between the slatted walkways, the life-size figures stood in formation; row after row of grey-black figures, the clay face of each one different, each modelled on the individual they had been, back when they had lived and breathed, twenty-three centuries ago.