The Dragon's Breath

by James Boschert

  Lun retrieved his bag of books and backed away towards entrance of his home, watching, fascinated, as Fang sheathed his wooden sword and drew his real blade. It slipped out of the lacquered sheath with an ominous sigh. He strode over to one of the boys, who was beginning to regain his senses. The boy sat up and groaned, holding his head, which was bleeding at the back. He got no further as Fang stepped up to him, placed a sandaled foot on his chest and pushed him back down again. The steel sword pricked his throat.

  Fang leaned his weight on the foot that was holding the boy down, gently probing with the sword; the blade glinted in the afternoon sunlight. To the horrified Lun it seemed as though Fang was going to kill the boy right there and then.

  Fang’s voice was low but it hissed with menace. “If I receive news that you are pestering Master Meng Lun ever again, I shall cut off your little balls while you are still alive and stuff them into your mouth. I shall then cut off your head and stick it on a pole so that your ancestors will be shamed for all eternity. The rest of your worthless carcass will go into the river for the fish and the crabs to feed upon. Do you understand me?”

  The boy gasped out his agreement to these terms. He began to reach for the blade but Fang twitched it and a trickle of blood began to flow down his neck. “I am not finished yet,” he rasped. “You will stay away from this place, and you will tell your friends that I shall do the same with them as I shall do to you.” He glowered at the boy. From the boy’s perspective the sight of Fang must have been terrifying, because he wet his pants and began to whimper.

  “Go away! Oh, and do not bother the old woman again, because that would also upset me!” Fang snapped and left, turning his back contemptuously on the boy, who scrambled to his feet and began to shake his companions awake, casting terrified looks at Fang’s receding back. The sorry little group shambled hurriedly down the road towards the wharf.

  Fang strode back to the gateway on his short but very muscular legs, dusting off his thin black cotton overcoat and sheathing the steel sword as he went in one fluid motion. The wooden sword was in his hand again as he strode between solid wooden doors past the grinning guards who had witnessed the episode. He shot them a glare and their expressions froze.

  Lun was scared of Fang. Although he was Chinese too, Fang came from the North, and he had spent time on the Nippon islands, which were even further to the north and across the sea. He used weapons of unusual design, and once in a while Lun had seen him practicing in the back yard of the servant’s quarters where he could do incredible things with his sword. Lun had never seen him smile. He always walked in a rolling fashion on the balls of his feet, his black, watchful eyes almost never still in a face that was stern with a forbidding scowl.

  “Thank you for saving me, Fang,” Lun called out to him.

  “It is time you learned how to defend yourself, Master Meng Lun. I am here when you decide to do so,” Fang called after the boy. Lun continued apace along the avenue of trees and well kept gardens towards the private quarters of the family. He barely noticed the profusion of litchi, Carambola and Longan fruit trees and the well kept shrubs in between. If anyone could teach him to protect himself it would be Fang, he was sure, but he was not a boy who liked hard physical work or sports, so he dreaded that aspect of training.

  “I shall be rich and have a bodyguard like Fang instead,” he thought to himself as he walked past the small but intricately shaped Carambola tree from which hung the cage containing his own song birds; they were silent at this time of day.

  His grandmother greeted him in the inner courtyard of the main house. She was sitting on a chair, enjoying the late afternoon sun that still shone through the fruit trees, dappling the grass and flat stones arrayed around the pond with shards of light.

  “I heard a disturbance outside, Lun. What was it all about?” her voice was pitched in a low tone, but it carried. He bowed politely from a few feet away.

  “Nothing, Grandmother. Fang broke up a group of thugs who were making a noise outside.”

  She gave him a shrewd look. “I trust it was not those boys again,” she said. Lun took a seat on the edge of the pond and shook his head. He didn’t want to sound like a crybaby, but she probably knew in any case. Little escaped this rather intimidating lady. Although she was quite small, perched on the large, carved, red lacquered arm chair which made her seem even smaller, she still commanded respect, especially from a nine year old boy who worshipped her. He trailed a hand in the cool water of the pond, watching the large carp and the prized goldfish swimming idly among the lilies.

  “I heard that you had another dream,” she said in her direct manner.

  He nodded and thought she must have heard this from his amah, who could never resist gossiping. “This time Father was on one of those large Arab ships,” he said, still looking at the water.

  “How strange! Anything else in the dream?”

  “No, Grandmother, I don’t remember all of it.” He looked towards her and glanced down at her tiny feet, which just protruded from under her intricately patterned green silk robe. Not for the first time he wondered how she could endure it. Both she and his mother were virtually immobilized by their bound feet and could not walk anywhere without assistance.

  The old lady noticed the direction of his gaze. “Don’t stare; it is rude, Lun,” she admonished him. He blushed with shame and apologized. He wanted to ask about the practice but had never found the courage to do so. Besides, his mother discouraged questions of this nature. He didn’t want to add to his collection of wounds.

  “Tell me all about what you learned at school today,” his grandmother said, kindly enough.

  He sighed. “It was Confucius again today, Grandmother,” he told her. “I don’t understand it very well.”

  “Tell me about one of them.”

  “The Teacher told us to remember this one: When the Archer misses his target, he should look within himself for the error.”

  “That sounds simple enough,” she remarked.

  “I am not an archer, so I don’t understand what he meant,” Lun complained.

  “It isn’t necessarily about Archers, Lun. Just remember it, and one day it will come to you. If you are going to pass your exams you had better understand Confucius, my boy,” she told him.

  Lun nodded politely. He would eventually have to study for exams, just like his brother and his father had before him, but that was several years away yet, and he wanted to learn more about poetry and art.

  “I want to know more about Lu Yu, the poet, and what he was thinking, Grandmother.”

  “Lu Yu? He talks far too much about wine. Poets are only good at doing two things. They think up nice poems, some of which are successful, but only a few, and most of them drink themselves to death at an early age. Is that what you want to do?”

  “No, Grandmother, I really want to be a painter.”

  It was her turn to sigh. “Painters sometimes do better than poets. At least they don’t drink so much, or they couldn’t wield a brush, but if you can become qualified as an Administrator you can do what you like after that. You should think about it.” She peered up at the sky where dark clouds were now a dense mass overhead. The sun had disappeared and the air around them was clammy and dense with moisture.

  “It is time for me to go in, and you too, unless you want to get very wet. It is going to rain any moment. Besides, you need to clean up. You look as though you have been rolling in the dirt.”

  “Ah Cheng!” she called, and a young servant girl hastened to her side. “Yes, my Lady?”

  “Have them bring me inside. I don’t want to get wet,” the old lady commanded.

  The servants hurried out and managed to carry Meng Lanfen, still seated on her heavy chair, onto the verandah that went all around the building just before the first large drops began to fall. Before long the skies opened in a torrential downpour, water spewing off the concave tiled roof. There was a brilliant flash of forked lightning; the cracking boom of thunder
that followed made Lun flinch.

  Lun ran out to retrieve his birds, getting drenched in the process. He went to his room, took off his wet clothes, and then padded off to the bath house with a large cotton towel wrapped around his waist.

  Later, over supper at the family table, he picked at his food. It was dark earlier than normal because of the overcast sky, so the servants had lit candles and placed them inside paper lanterns. They glowed like bright moons, displaying colorful images of cranes and birds on their sides. His mother and grandmother sat at the other end of the long polished oval table, talking quietly to one another, largely ignoring him.

  His amah gave him a dish of roasted marinated duck, finely sliced. The incident with the boys had taken some of his appetite away, but she knew that he enjoyed eating this dish. He picked up a morsel to sample; it tasted delicious. The edges were crisp fried, the meat was juicy and flavorful with spices. The flowered cabbage that came with it in another dish was also very tasty, having been cooked with some meat gravy and flavored with lemon juice and hot chili sauce.

  His mother evidently found the food to her liking, because she smacked her lips and commented, “Very good! Tem Pau is one of the best cooks in this city. I am so glad that my brother sent him to us.”

  Her ivory chop sticks clicked rapidly as they took hold of the finely sliced duck meat, conveyed it to her painted lips, and then snapped up morsels of vegetable, fried noodles, and tiny hard-boiled quail eggs in small dishes placed nearby. To the watching Lun, she resembled a fussy crane as she pecked at the food with the sticks.

  “Has your brother had any news of my son? It has been a while now since we heard anything at all. ” His grandmother paused in her eating, placed her own carved ivory chop sticks, yellowed with age, on a jade rest, and took a sip of warm wine from a small, finely worked porcelain bowl.

  Lun pricked up his ears. He had finished his duck but wanted to listen to them talking. They sometimes overlooked the fact that he was still there. They always gossiped at supper time when the men were not at the house. Although he knew his grandmother was not fond of his mother, they still kept up the appearance of civility, and this was one of the few times they met during the day. His mother kept to her large apartments for the most part, while his grandmother liked to spend time in the gardens on fine days. Neither left the compound very often.

  “My brother and his two associates are very concerned by the lack of news, but he does not confide in me all that much. Still, I think he would inform me if there was anything worthwhile,” his mother replied. She, too, took a long sip of rice wine. Both of them tended to relax more when they drank wine. Kee Wen, one of the discretely hovering servants, replenished the empty bowls with more hot wine from a small ceramic pot with a spout and a bamboo woven handle.

  “Well, let’s hope that they return with a full cargo. It would take nine months as a round trip if they manage to get to India. Even with your brother’s share deducted, my son should do very well, and we can worry a little less about finances,” his grandmother stated. She sent a glance down the table towards Lun, as though to warn him not to say anything about his dreams.

  His mother nodded agreement, then turned her attention towards him. He shrank within himself, as he knew the daily interrogation about school would begin.

  *****

  Fang listened to the rain as it rattled on the tiles above his head. He was in his room in the area of the male servant’s quarters. He was half drunk, having consumed a good two thirds of a small jug of rice wine, which had been given to him in the kitchens. The cook’s maid had handed the bottle to him with a saucy glance at his massive calves. Once he had told her that they were like that because he had been a beast of burden, pulling a plow in the rice fields instead of the buffalo, as punishment for his temper tantrums. This had been while he lived in the monastery up in the North. She was obviously enamored with him, but he had ignored her this evening. Another time he would have encouraged her. The cook and his assistants knew better than to tell him not to take the wine. One look at his grim features was enough to silence them. For sure he would get drunk, and they prayed he would not make a lot of noise while doing so.

  The rain calmed him and the alcohol helped to numb his brain, which in turn helped him to forget, for a short while at least, where he was and how close he had come that afternoon to killing all four of the boys.

  The memory of the trickle of blood on the throat of the one boy, where his sword had pricked him, set him trembling again as he recalled resisting with all his might the urge to just lean on the blade and run it through the boy’s neck and into the ground. He wiped his face with a calloused hand, as though to clear the cobwebs of his mind.

  The impulse to kill was now so ingrained that he knew it to be an addiction. However, it clashed with his concerns about the afterlife and the reincarnation that followed. Ahmida Buddha, but he had to control his impulses! He beat his forehead with the palm of his hand over and over. He would be reborn, he knew, in many forms, most of them as a lesser being for all the acts of violence he had perpetrated on others. He had gone straight to his room and lit four candles and apologized for his thoughts. He did this after every fight and every time he destroyed an inn where he had drunk himself brainless, leaving death and destruction behind him, fighting with a drunken fury that left him with little knowledge of what had transpired, and a ferocious hangover the next day.

  He muttered over and over the mantra:

  Our problems are not solved

  By physical force,

  By hatred,

  By war.

  Our problems are solved

  By loving kindness.

  He took another swig of the bottle and snorted. Not killing the boys had been kind!

  This time he had been very restrained, but he still berated himself for the deadly urges that threatened to overwhelm him on occasions like this. He prayed to Buddha and promised to do better still. He concentrated on listening to the drip of water from the eaves onto the grass and the distant plop of rain drops on the pond. It helped to calm him as he sat cross-legged near to the window, sipping his wine. He had done his duty, and rescued the boy Lun without killing anyone. It was his duty; he would just have to learn not to succumb to his urge to kill every time.

  If you are equal, then fight if you are able.

  If you are fewer, then keep away if you are able.

  If you are not as good, then flee if you are able.

  Master Sun Tzu

  Chapter Seventeen

  The China Seas

  Talon spent some time the next day with the captain discussing their options.

  “I know that you only agreed to come this far, Captain, but you also know that we cannot sell our cargo here.”

  “That has become clear to me, Master Talon,”the captain responded. He sounded deeply unhappy with the situation. “By God, I am sure I know why, too. That Sing is responsible. I’ve heard from the other captains that he controls everything that comes in and out of this island. Everyone is frightened of him.”

  “I agree, but we have no leverage with him, and I cannot afford to take his offer, let alone those of the other thieves who are under pressure to bid very low. I don’t believe that it is solely because of the full godowns, either. Hsü says that there should be more Chinese ships here.”

  They were standing by the after railing, staring at the island and another rain storm that was coming their way.

  “What about on the mainland over there?” Dandachi waved his hand in the general direction of Kulam Bar.

  “Master Hsü talked to the Chinese about that, and they informed him their godowns are full also, with no ships to carry their cargos,” Talon told him.

  The captain looked morosely at the island and muttered a curse.

  “I hope one of the big storms strikes them and washes their warehouses away,” he said.

  “There is an alternative, Safa,” Talon murmured.

  Captain Dandachi turned
to face him.

  “Our friend Hsü came to see me yesterday, during the storm, and suggested that we take our cargo to China. He offered to pay his way to come with us, too.”

  Captain Dandachi glowered at Talon. “You know that would be yet another month, perhaps two, at sea? I am not sure the men would like that. I certainly don’t,” he growled.

  Talon turned back to stare over the railing at the dense green canopy of the island jungle that came almost to the water’s edge.

  Dandachi shifted his broad shoulders. “But if we cannot make a profit here, then where can we go, other than to China itself? Will you sweeten the taste of this for the men if they agree to crew us?” he asked.

  Talon nodded his head vigorously. “I think I can trust Hsü. He does not give much away, but I know he does not want to remain here, and he has guaranteed that he will help us sell our cargo and pay for his passage handsomely,” he replied. “I, in turn, will pay you and the men an extra bonus to take us there.”

  “I will assemble the crew,” said the captain.

  Within a few minutes, all the hands were gathered in the waist of the ship and stood staring up at Talon, the captain and Reza. Yosef and Dar’an were there alongside. The women were below. Rav’an didn’t want their presence to influence the men’s decision.

  Hsü, sensing that there was to be an important meeting, had come topside but stood well back on the steering deck out of the way, simply to listen and get a feeling for the mood of the men.

  Captain Dandachi opened by saying, “Men… Master Talon, Master Reza and I have spent a considerable amount of time discussing our choices. They are very few, but our new friend, Master Hsü, has offered an alternative, and Master Talon has suggested that we sail for China.” He stopped at this point and motioned to Talon to continue. Talon had to wait while the crewmen chattered amongst themselves. Some were agitated and obviously against the idea, while others were more amenable.