The Dragon's Breath

by James Boschert

Lord Meng Hsü

  Lord Meng Hsü woke up to the familiar sounds of a ship at sea: the hiss of the water flowing along the hull, the creaking of the fitments and timbers as the ship rose and fell in a light swell. He could hear voices above his head on the upper deck. They were not Chinese voices!

  He sat up with a start. They were not speaking Cantonese. He reached for his sword and found it by his side, then looked around desperately for the box. It was near to hand. At the same instant he recalled the events that had led up to this moment and paused. He sat still as in his mind he relived the ordeal of the night.

  The great storm and the fire in the forecastle of the ship; the panicked yells of the crew men as the storm wrested control of the ship from them. The high winds and enormous waves had already taken down not one but two of the ship’s masts and swept several of the crew overboard, never to be seen again. Their cries were still with him as he sat on the thin mattress and shook his head to clear it and adjust to his presence on a strange ship.

  He remembered the captain of his own ship screaming almost into his ear that they had to abandon ship. The man was terrified of the fire, which raged in the fore part and had taken hold in the waist where the highly flammable fire powder kegs, cordage, spices and precious woods were stored. They were finished if the kegs ignited, but the storm was probably going to sink them anyway. Hsü had not wanted to entrust their lives to the small boats when the waves were so high and the rain so heavy. The two men had been screaming their disagreement at each other in the baffling winds of the tempest.

  Then the main sail had caught fire and lit up the night around them, spraying a long trail flame and sparks in line with the wind like some terrifying firework from hell. They all flinched when the fire reached one of the barrels of powder in the hold and it exploded. In retrospect, Hsü thought that might well have saved them, as it blew upwards, blowing a large hole in the forward deck of the ship, which allowed even more water to pour into the front hold, temporarily dowsing the fire in that area. The howling wind had reduced the sound of the explosion to a mere thud.

  Reluctantly he had turned to the captain, a man he didn’t entirely trust, who came from the north of China, and told him to arrange for the abandonment of the ship. He had left the deck to go below and tell his administrator Jiaya, and Fuling, his son, to prepare themselves to leave. He’d then hurried to his own cabin and found Lihua, his concubine, crouched in a corner.

  “Get up! We must leave!” he shouted over the din of the storm and the crashing of breaking timbers all around them. She shook her head frantically and tried even harder to squeeze herself into the corner, where she remained with her eyes shut, shivering with fear.

  It took some minutes for him to coax her onto her feet, and then he had to search for the box which held his most precious jewelry and papers, after which he rummaged about desperately searching for his sword. He knew he would need it in an open boat with an untrustworthy crew. Eventually he managed to move Lihua out of the cabin into the anteroom, where he found his son and Jiaya waiting for him.

  “What are you doing here? Get out onto the deck. Come on, we must hurry,” he called out, and he pushed Fuling ahead of him up the stairs, dragging Lihua by the wrist.

  The scene that greeted them when they’d emerged from the lower cabins shocked even him, and he had left the deck less than an hour before. The ship was a desolate wreck, with the spars and tackle moving about the half submerged waist with the rise and fall of the ship. Even in the dark he could see the ominous signs that they were even deeper in the water than before. Waves were bursting over the transom. The spray stung their faces as they stared about in a darkness lit only by the occasional flash of lighting and punctuated by the crash of thunder.

  Despite the storm there was a kind of silence, which at first he could not to identify. Then it dawned on him that, other than his group, there wasn’t anyone on the decks. His eyes frantically scanned the heaving deck, the waist of the ship with its tangle of ropes, charred sails and broken masts. They saw with horror that not one of the three boats was where they should have been.

  He sloshed across the deck to the side, but saw nothing but darkness and the menacing waves. Still clutching his box, he ran up the steps to the steering level and again peered out to sea. Nothing! With a growing sense of despair he ran across the deck, jumping over more fallen tackle, to peer out into the darkness on the starboard side. The shrieking wind which tore at his clothing and the curling waves almost alongside seemed to mock his distress.

  He shouted to the others to get under cover from the storm. They moved in a dazed, ragged huddle to the shelter of the overhang of the steering deck, where he joined them. It was time to pray. He wondered if his ancestors had been displeased with him or some God had been offended in India. He went back to his cabin to place the sword and the box on a shelf, as though somehow that might protect them. He knew full well that they were doomed and it was only a matter of time. Lihua unexpectedly joined him, while his son and the old man hovered outside the door with haunted looks on their faces.

  He held her as, in a terrible breach of manners, she put her head into his shoulder and wept, shaking with cold and fear. He tried to smile as he beckoned his son and Jiaya into the pitching and rolling cabin and said, “Well, now we have the ship to ourselves. We can sail wherever we please.”

  There were no return smiles. Lihua gave a low sob of despair, sank to the floor clutching her arms to her chest, and began rocking herself.

  Jiaya knelt before him. “We can only make our peace now, Master Meng. Ahmida Buddha will take us if we merit it.”

  Hsü, who preferred the reliability of reason to the consolation of faith, rummaged through his extensive memory of Confucius quotes but could find nothing of comfort there. Perhaps Confucius had never been in a mighty storm at sea, he reflected.

  Hsü glanced at his son, who was watching Lihua crying on the floor. Not for the first time did he catch the boy’s expression. They were about to be either fried to death or drowned, and his son was lusting after his concubine!

  He sighed to himself with wry amusement. Perhaps the eminent presence of death made his son yearn to copulate with the girl, anything to forget their predicament. It did that to some people, he’d heard. He waved to his boy to come and sit with him as the deck gave a great heave and roll. The boy stumbled, then sat next to him on the floor. A wave had washed along the deck above them and water was now seeping through the seams and dripping onto the floor. He didn’t want to be outside. Let the fates take them here in some sparse kind of comfort rather than freezing up there.

  He must have slept sitting up in the lotus position because he snapped awake, aware of the arrival of dawn. Looking around, he noticed that the other two men were gone. Getting stiffly to his feet he tried to rub some warmth into his frozen knees and get the circulation going in his legs. Then he left Lihua, who was asleep in a huddle in a corner, and went to see if he could find out what had transpired during the night.

  He found his son on the upper after deck, gripping onto the railing and peering westward. Next to him was Jiaya, who waved at him and pointed excitedly in the same direction. Hsü was astonished that the ship was still afloat. The fire was out, leaving blackened railings and planks where it had raged the night before.

  “What did you see?” he asked as he arrived on the deck and clutched a railing to prevent himself from falling.

  “There is something over there, I think to the west of us. It is hard to see in this light,” Jiaya called out.

  “The boat is still sound, and we could have saved her if those filthy cowards had not abandoned us last night!” Fuling called out. “Curse them to death!” He swept a hand through his long black hair, which was being blown about his face. Hsü was irrationally pleased to see that his son’s normally submissive expression was replaced by raw anger. Perhaps a little late, under the circumstances, he mused, but better than before.

  Hsü nodded. He had been about t
o say the same thing. If they had a full crew they might have been able to do something. As it was, the three of them could do nothing to save the foundering ship.

  “There it is again! Do you see it?” Fuling shouted, pointing.

  They peered aft, and sure enough they had seen the pointed sail of another vessel rising and falling many li behind them.

  Before very long, the other ship had hove to, and they had been transferred and saved just in time to watch their own vessel go under.

  *****

  Now Hsü listened to the sounds coming from above; the storm was over, he surmised. The ship was not rising and falling as wildly as when they had come aboard. He wondered if they were any safer. The people had been very helpful, and Lihua had been taken below by one of the womenfolk; that at least was reassuring. He heard a soft snore and looked around. His son was still deep in the sleep of the exhausted, and Jiaya had wedged himself into one of the corners of the small cabin where he slept with his head against the wall, his mouth open, dead to the world. The old man looked very frail.

  Hsü got to his feet. His stomach rumbled. He could not remember when he had last eaten. He opened the door. Two dark men with beards jumped up and shook their heads and waved their hands at him, indicating that he could not leave. They were armed with spears and daggers.

  He nodded politely, lifted his open hands and said, “I am not going to do anything. I am hungry.” He spoke in Hindi.

  One of them shook his head and spoke back in Arabic. “You cannot leave. You wait and we bring the captain.”

  Hsü nodded. He could understand these people, although it was not easy.

  “I wait. Hungry!” he smiled and pointed with his fingers to his mouth.

  “Allah be praised, he speaks our language!” the other said. He smiled, displaying gaps and stumps of yellow teeth. “You wait. I go for Master Talon.” He rushed off up the stairs, calling as he went.

  Within a minute there were other voices, and two men came back down the stairs following the sailor, who was explaining something in rapid Arabic. The two men nodded.

  “Thank you, Waqqas. I will talk to him now,” one said.

  He turned and faced Hsü, who found himself looking up at the same man who had assisted him on the other ship. He noticed with some surprise that this man had light colored hair and lighter skin than the other Arabs. He could not fail to notice a long scar running down the man’s right jawline, even though the beard hid most of it. A quick glance at the other confirmed his thoughts that he, too, had helped to save them.

  Hsü bowed and said, “We owe you our lives. I thank you for the great risk you took in coming to our aid.”

  “You speak Arabic?” Talon said with surprise.

  “I learned a little, while in a place called Gujarat. I apologize, it is very bad.”

  “On the contrary, it is quite sufficient. I had not expected a ... Chinese to know Arabic,” the Talon replied with a smile.

  Hsü was only mildly offended. “We learn what we can.”

  “It will help us to understand what happened to you and your friends. Where is the rest of the crew of your ship?”

  Hsü was happy to tell him, but first he asked, “We have not eaten for two days. Very hungry. May we have food?”

  Reza chuckled. “He is right, we need to feed them first, Talon, and then we can find out what happened.”

  Talon grinned. “Yes, of course. I apologize. My companion Reza has more sense than I. Please come with me and we will feed you.” He turned and led the way across the short space to another more spacious cabin, where some carpets and cushions had been arranged around a low table.

  “We will eat and drink, and then you can tell us how you came to be here,” Talon said.

  *****

  There was little conversation while Hsü ate the cold rice and morsels of meat and lentil in the wooden bowl he was given. He lamented the lack of chopsticks but realized that the rice was very loose and would have been difficult to pick up. He remembered just in time to eat with his right hand. Not to have done so would have been a severe loss of face.

  The other two sat across from him and spoke yet another language while they observed him. He in turn looked them over and decided that, while they seemed friendly enough, both young men had that hard, appraising look in their eyes that he recalled seeing in the eyes of other killers he had known. In particular, Fang, his own bodyguard, whom he had left at home to guard his family. He felt a chill of fear. Perhaps he had fallen in among some really bad people.

  One of them, the one called Talon, who appeared to be the senior, caught him watching them and stared straight into his eyes. Hsü held the look for a long moment, and then looked away, but not before he remarked the intense green eyes, almost those of a cat.

  Even if they were not threatening, it would not be a good idea to offend these people, he decided. He finished his meal, sat back on his haunches, and regarded the others before making a short bow and thanking them for the food. It had been all he could do not to wolf it down, he had been so hungry. As it was, it had only alleviated the hunger enough for him to maintain his dignity and not seem crude in front of these barbarians.

  He gave a small smile and opened his hands. “Ask me what you wish to know,” he invited them.

  Talon was the first to speak. “What is your name?”

  “My name is Meng Hsü. I am a temporary ambassador for the governor of Guangzhou. I was on a trading mission.”

  Talon nodded then pointed to himself. “I am Talon de Gilles, and this is my companion, Reza.”

  Hsü gave a short bow to them, which they reciprocated with a nod of their heads.

  “Where were you heading when the storm struck?” Talon asked.

  Although Hsü struggled with the language, he was able to understand and responded in kind.

  “We were sailing home to my country, China. I live in a city called Guangzhou. It is in the south of the country. It is a great port where many of your own people come to trade.”

  Both Talon and Reza glanced at one another in surprise.

  “Is that the same place our friends in Oman call Khanfu?” Reza quietly asked Talon, who nodded thoughtfully.

  “We have heard from merchants of Oman that they have been to your country, but neither of us has ever met your people before, and we certainly didn’t know you travelled this far to the west of ... China,” Talon said, pronouncing the strange word carefully.

  “We Chinese have traded with the people called the Hind and further west to Oman for centuries,” Hsü stated with some pride.

  There was a pause while the two digested this information.

  “What happened to your ship?” Talon asked.

  “There was a fire, probably because some careless crew member or the cook failed to place the embers of the oven in a metal container when the storm struck. I don’t really know, but it took hold very quickly and was soon impossible to put out.”

  Hsü went on to explain what had happened and how they had found themselves abandoned by their crew.

  Talon and Reza listened in silence, except for the occasional request to clarify something he had said. When he finished, Talon poured the remaining tea into their small cups.

  “Allah was kind to you this time. May the captain of your ship perish for abandoning you like that. It was fortunate for you that Reza saw your ship while he was up one of our masts helping repair it. It is unlikely that we would have seen you otherwise.”

  They then spoke rapidly in their other language, and Reza shrugged.

  Talon turned to Hsü and said, “The captain and the crew of this ship are from all over the Arab world. The captain had to be persuaded to bring his ship near yours so that we could rescue you and your wife and those other two.”

  Hsü bowed low from the sitting position. They were all seated cross-legged on a thick carpet that was comfortably dry.

  “It was great Joss that you found us. I cannot thank you enough for what you have done.
The young man is my son; his name is Fuling, while the older man is my administrator, Jiaya.”

  “The woman? Is she your servant?” Reza asked. It had not been lost on him, nor on anyone else, that the woman, despite her soaked and exhausted appearance when she came aboard, was very beautiful.

  “Er... she is my concubine,” Hsü stated shortly. The question was rude, but he supposed they needed to know who their uninvited guests were.

  The other two looked at one another impassively.

  “She will have to stay with our women folk for the time being. You understand why?” Talon asked him.

  Hsü was familiar with the Moslem customs, so he nodded his head without comment.

  “She will be well looked after. The other women are our wives,” Talon stated. “We shall find clothes for you, your son and the old man. You may have the cabin next to this one. It is small, but it is all we have.”

  “Where, may I ask, are you sailing?” Hsü asked.

  “We are going to a place our captain calls Kalah Bar in the straights of Salaht.”

  “I passed through that straight nine months ago; it is where we were going to stop before continuing on to China.”

  “Would you be able to find a ship to take you home to China from there?” Reza asked him.

  “It should be possible, yes. It depends upon the season, of course, and whether there are any Chinese ships going our way at this time of year. I think so.”

  “Did you have a cargo for trade?” Talon asked.

  Hsü had to control his emotions at this point. He leaned forward and nodded in silence. Then he looked up and spoke.

  “I went to Hind, the great land to our west, to deliver papers to a king in the South called Balhara, and then on to Gujarat to assure the sultan that the Sung Emperor remembers him and sends greetings. My mission complete, I loaded our ship with goods to bring home to China.”

  “What goods would you bring to China from Al Hind?” Reza asked with a sharp glance at Talon.

  “Sandalwood, which is precious to us. We also had ivory from Africa, gold, spices, and pelts of tiger and other wild animals, which are popular in our country. Much more.” He almost choked on the thought of all of that wealth, now at the bottom of the sea. How he would be able to explain the appalling loss to the other investors, he simply didn’t know. He would weather the loss, but some of the others of the cartel would be seriously affected.