by G R Matthews
As he lunged, his eyes widened in shock as the old man, mid-step, twisted and turned, rolling underneath the energy bolt, and then sprung up and over Haung’s extended sword. Over Haung, in fact, who could do nothing to stop his forward motion. The old man’s foot caught the back of Haung’s head in a powerful kick which drove the younger man to the floor. Haung rolled again, tasting blood in mouth. There was a pounding pain in his head. Turning to face the old man, he raised his sword again.
“Well,” the old man smiled a nasty, knowing, smile, “if we are cheating.” Throwing his sword high into the air, spinning end over end, the man put both wrists together, palms facing outwards the man shouted and pushed his hands forward.
The force that hit Haung, picked him up and threw him across the tiled floor. His sword flew from his grasp to clatter on the stones. He bounced once, twice and fetched up against a stone wall. Through bleary eyes he saw the old man catch his falling sword and stalk forward, stopping on the way to pick up Haung’s sword. Haung tried to force himself upright, using the wall as a brace. He collapsed back, his legs and arms trembling with fatigue.
“Your magic tricks are nice, but the whole paper and shout are a bit of a giveaway.” The old man knelt down in front of Haung and offered him his sword back. “You rely on them too much to get you out of trouble.”
“Shifu, I can’t beat you without them,” Haung gasped.
“Haung, you can’t beat me with them.” The old man shook his head. “Put the tricks to one side for a while. They might have their place, but you need to rely on your own skill first and foremost.”
“You used magic too,” Haung accused him.
“There are three forces in this world that you need to understand. The first is your Fang-Shi trained magic. It has its uses, but a trained opponent will have a counter in place, and it drains you of energy. Not much, I grant, but all that energy you have caught up and stored in those bits of paper is energy you can’t use in a fight. It also knocks your meridians out of balance.” Shifu slid his sword into its scabbard.
“The second is the spirit. You have met a Wu or two, I understand. There are not as many as there used to be, according to the records. But they draw their energy from the spirit plane and share characteristics of their animal bonding. If you know the animal, you have an advantage. For most, to fight a Wu is death. If you battle against one, overwhelm it with numbers if you can or wear it out, drain it of energy.”
“Lastly, there are the Taiji. The masters of themselves. Warriors who balance the internal and external, the yin and the yang. The true Taiji harbours and stores his energy, using it when needed and replenishing when not. There is no need for outside power. No spirit or spell to draw on the power of the void. There is only the master. I can teach you the essence of Taiji so that you can master it over years of practice, but you must let go of the Fang-Shi. Destroy the spells you have, release that energy and come back into balance.”
“There is war coming, Shifu. I will need those spells and tricks.” Haung clambered back to his feet.
“Haung, you have potential. A great deal of it and the Emperor has tasked me with teaching you the way of the Taiji. Do you wish either of us to go against the Emperor’s orders?” Shifu looked up into Haung’s eyes. “Your wife and child reside in the Forbidden City at his expense. You were healed at his expense. He sees something in you, Haung. He has need of you, but Fang-Shi magic is not the way. Until you let go of that, you will always be defeated by other Taiji or excellent swordsman.”
“I beat Jing Ke,” Haung said defensively.
“Haung, I am sorry to say you did not. You beat a Jing Ke but not the Jing Ke.” Shifu shook his head sadly and turned away. “Come, let us take tea and I will convince you.”
Haung wiped the blood from his lips with the sleeve of his robe and followed his teacher past the other soldiers who were up and about this early hour. A few turned to stare at the pair of them. He ignored them.
Chapter 3
The scent of the forest was something he had learned to appreciate during his time on the mountain. He knew he would miss it if he left. A combination of earth and leaves, a mineral tang from the weathering of the exposed rocks, and the freshness of rain. Underlying this, a hint of moss and mould, alongside the musk of animals. In the spring and summer, the sweetness of blossom and fruit, turned sweeter still in the autumn by decomposition. Winter was muted, subtle and harder to detect, but there was a pleasure in savouring the delicate scent. Each season written in the aroma of the forest.
Zhou took another swig from the almost empty water skin and turning his back to the trunk, slid down to sit at the foot of the tree. The stone path was only a pace or two away but he did not want to set foot on it again. It led back up the mountain. to the stairs and failure.
Why can’t I do it? Twenty six steps and I can’t get past the fourth. There cannot be many who have failed as much as me. Even Xióngmāo is getting tired of it, of me.
Zhou slapped his open palm down onto the forest floor. Looking out across the path and the valley beyond he could see the peaks of other mountains. The tallest were snow covered all year round. A few, he knew, were the sites of temples to the various systems of belief the Empire encompassed. They all came here, to these mountains, the tallest in the Empire. The Ruists worshipping nature, seeking to understand the harmony between all things. The Buddhists trying to understand themselves and reach perfection. The Taoists worshipped the ancestors and sought to improve themselves, to live forever. In the last few hundred years, as Boqin told it, even the disciples of the one-god had begun to build their temples on the lower slopes. But higher than all the others was the Temple of the Wu. Built on the tallest mountain in the range, it took travellers many days to climb the ten thousand stairs to reach the temple.
And what do they find? If they are lucky, someone will be here to welcome them and give them enough food, water and rest to make the descent. More than likely though, they’d find no one here. Three weeks of being on my own before anyone showed up to help me.
The Wu had no hierarchy, no priests, just a loose collection of men and women who went about their own lives with little interaction or day to day concern for one another. It had taken months for his instructors to arrive and take over his training from Boqin. Even now they seemed to have little interest in him. Apart from Xióngmāo. She spent some time every day with him, giving him exercises to do, instructing on the correct scrolls to read in the library.
The library. Hundreds upon hundreds of scrolls stacked high. It had been his only entertainment and company for those first weeks, devouring scroll after scroll during the hours of daylight. Learning a little and not understanding a lot. Many scrolls were accounts of travels long ago. They talked of towns and cities that he did not recognise, of people he had never heard of, of Kings and Emperors that, as far as he knew, never existed.
Then there were the treatise on the nature of the universe, of the stars in the sky and the other planets that ancient astronomers had identified. These scrolls were interesting, even if they told him nothing that he needed to survive.
By far the most plentiful were the scrolls that sought to explain the existence of animals and their relationship with their environment. One had talked of ecosystems; each animal and plant living in harmony with its surrounding and climate. Zhou viewed this mostly as poetic and idealistic. How could a cow or chicken live in harmony with its surroundings when it relied on man for food? A relationship the animal reciprocated without choice.
And none of this gets me up those fucking steps. He threw the drained water skin away.
There was a noise from behind. He cocked his head to one side, listening. There it was again. He closed his eyes and sought to identify it. Again it filtered through the trees. There was a metallic sound about it. Something that the forest did not produce naturally and, as far as he knew, he was the only one this far down the trail today.
He stood and listened again. Sure of the di
rection, he set off through the trees.
* * *
It was getting louder and Zhou slowed down, placing every foot with great care on the forest floor. There was a clearing ahead, the change in the light falling through the trees and the rustle of leaves were clues he had learned to recognise. Pushing aside the low branches that grew only on trees at the edge of clearings or paths, he gasped.
In centre of a small clearing, bounded on every side by a ring of trees, sat an old lady holding a long metal pole. Zhou stared as she moved the pole back and forth across the large boulder in front of her. By his reckoning, the pole must have measured eight or nine feet in length and be at least as wide as his wrist. Yet the old lady scraped the tip across the stone as if it were no heavier than a feather.
“You might as well come in,” the lady said in a whispered voice. “This is going to take me a while.”
Zhou stayed still, rooted to the spot. She stopped her scraping and placed the pole down on the grass.
“I am not going to hurt you.” She turned to look at him, sweeping her long grey hair out of her face. “Would you like a drink?”
Zhou placed one foot in front of the other as though he had forgotten how to walk and the task took all of his concentration to accomplish.
“I have tea somewhere round here,” she said with a smile. “Ah, here it is.”
From the other side of the boulder she pulled forth a tray with a pot of tea, steam rising from its lid, and two cups. She patted the ground next to her. “Come and sit down. Rest a while. I could do with a chat to break the monotony.”
Zhou followed her instructions automatically, no choice, no chance to refuse. The grass was dry and warm beneath him and the sun shone down on his head. He accepted the offered cup and breathed in the fumes. They swept through his body, dissolving the stress, relaxing his muscles and leaving a delicious, warm ache. He took a sip of the hot, dark liquid.
“Nice tea,” he said.
“Thank you, young man.” She gave him another smile. “It is a blend I am very fond of. I was introduced to it by a wonderful man. A musician, if I recall correctly. I do remember he was very handsome, like you.”
“I am not a musician,” Zhou said as he took another sip.
“No, but we all have our gifts and talents. Sometimes they take a lot of work to perfect. Take my musician friend, he practised every day for hours on end. At the beginning, he told me, the skin on his fingers would fray and peel away, but he wasn’t allowed to stop. His master would dip them in vinegar, a most painful experience I expect, and command him to practise.” She sipped her own tea.
“A cruel master,” Zhou said.
“You think so?” She turned her eyes on him again and he was taken by their colour, blue like the sky. “All great art needs sacrifice, time and practise. And, yes, quite often there is pain along the way. When I met the musician, he was struggling with one particular phrase in a song. He had practised it day upon day, hour upon hour and still it did not sound right. The tempo was wrong, the notes were not crisp, the pitch was not true. It was always something, he told me. His master had tried to show him, played it for him, helped every step of the way, but still the musician struggled to perfect it. He was in such a state that he considered throwing it all in and giving up.”
“What did he do?” Zhou asked.
“I don’t know,” and the creases on her face deepened as she smiled even more. “I hope he that went back and carried on practicing. He had the potential to be one of the best. He played for me on that day and gave me his recipe for the tea. I haven’t seen him since.”
“Who are you?” Zhou looked at her again. She was just as she seemed, an elderly lady sat in a clearing. Grey hair, wrinkled skin, age spots on her cheeks and frail fingers on bony hands.
“Who are you?” she replied.
“I am Zhou. I was a diplomat.” He felt uncomfortable saying those words. That part of his life was over, in ruins, charred bones and burnt skin. He looked away from her measuring gaze.
“No, I don’t think you are,” and he turned sharply back towards her. “You are not lying to me, but I think you are lying to yourself. Nothing worthwhile is easy, young man. Look at me. Here I am, in a forest clearing near the top of a high mountain.”
“What are you doing here?” Zhou whispered.
“Isn’t it obvious?” She picked up the long metal pole and began scraping the tip, once again, across the boulder. “I am making a needle.”
“A needle?” Zhou’s eyes widened. “But that will take forever. Wouldn’t you be better starting with a smaller piece of iron? It would take much less time.”
“Yes, it would. But it wouldn’t be the needle I want, that I need. My needles must be made this way, to weave the tapestries I produce. If the needles were made another way the tapestries would not be as good and everyone would notice. This is not my first needle,” she explained as she kept up a steady rhythm with the metal pole. “Yì kǒu chī bū chéng pàngzǐ, yí bù kuà bú dào tiānbiān.”
“It is impossible to add much weight with a single morsel; it is hard to travel afar with a single step?” Zhou said, puzzled.
“Success does not come overnight, young man. If you want something you must work at it. You will fail many times before you succeed. Once you do, you’ll realise that all those failures were really the times when you were learning the most. Now, it is about time you head off to wherever you are going. I must get this needle made and can’t afford any more distractions.” She waved him away without taking her eyes from the moving tip of the needle she was making.
Zhou stood as commanded and stumbled back into the forest. As the trees closed around him, he turned to bid her farewell, but the clearing had vanished along with the old lady, the rock and the metal pole.
Chapter 4
“Your tea, Shifu.” Haung handed the small, delicate porcelain cup to the old man sat across from him. They both tapped the table twice with the fingers of their right hand and then sipped the hot, green and fragrant fluid.
“Haung, Jing Ke is... complicated,” Shifu began. “He is not one man alone. There are a multitude of him. It is how he operates. He finds likely candidates, teaches and trains them to play his role, to use his name. His fame and legend spreads with each deed or atrocity. Some only days apart, but thousands of miles distant from the other. You killed one of those men. The real Jing Ke would have killed you in short order.”
“Shifu,” Haung halted as the old man raised his hand.
“Haung, I was tasked with tracking down and killing Jing Ke many years ago. I killed four of his men and never came close to finding him,” Shifu explained.
“Yes, Shifu.” Haung looked into the other’s eyes. “I am sure I can handle an assassin.”
“Haung,” Shifu shook his head, “Jing Ke is not an assassin. He is a warrior and a master. He may take work as an assassin, but that is not how he was trained. I should know, I trained him. Believe me when I say, you could not stand against him. Not yet.”
Haung took a deep breath, his fingers gripping the thin porcelain tightly enough to cause the glaze to crackle. “You trained Jing Ke?”
“To be a fighter, a warrior. I trained him to be a Taiji, not an assassin. He was, is, one of the best students I ever trained.” Shifu looked away from Haung and took another sip of his tea. “He is my son, my adopted son. Let me tell you how I found him...”
* * *
The young officer did not wait for the horse to stop before leaping from the saddle. He sailed through the air, tucking into a somersault and landing on his feet, balanced. The long, straight sword appeared in his hands and he struck, twice. The bandits fell to the ground, blood spraying from their necks and swords tumbling from their lifeless fingers.
More bandits in mismatched armour spilled out of the ramshackle houses that lined the churned up mud road, the only thoroughfare in the small village. The weak cries of their victims followed them through the doorways.
�
��Get him,” screamed the largest of the bandits and they all drew steel; swords, axes and rust-spotted daggers.
The young officer flicked his long braid of hair around his neck but did not turn to run. With a sharp cry he jumped forward, into the midst of the onrushing bandits. His sword flowing like a river over their guards and around their parries, washing away their lives in a flood of bright red blood.
The young man smiled, proud, as the bandit leader slipped off his sword with a soft sigh.
* * *
“... I killed them all. Twelve in all. Back then, when I was young, that was my job. If a problem arose and it needed a quick resolution, I was it...”
* * *
His fingers felt the neck of every villager, in every home. Those who were dead, he made sure their eyes were closed. He eased the passing of those too injured to save, the sharp knife in the intricately inlaid sheath the best mercy he had. And, when possible, he bound wounds or cut and cauterised if needed. The smell of burning flesh was sweet but repugnant.
The village was finished. There were simply not enough people left alive to farm the land and produce the food. The pitiful number of survivors were staggering away from the ruins as the rain began to fall and he emerged from the last house, a small wailing boy in his arms.
* * *
“...they didn’t want him. His mother was dead, as were his three brothers. I never found the father. For all I know, he was amongst those stumbling away. To them he was another mouth to feed. A drain on their non-existent resources. I burnt the village to the ground.”
“Shifu, how could you burn the bodies?” Haung asked, “Won’t they rise as ghosts?”
“To haunt a patch of land? No, Haung, I am sure they never wanted to return there.” Shifu looked down at the table, tracing the inlay with one finger. “I brought him home with me and raised him as my own.”
