The Stone Road

by G R Matthews

  # # #

  Haung lowered himself with infinite care from the roof and dangled, for a second, in front of the open window, before he let go and dropped to the ground. He paused and listened for any change in the courtyard, his eyes picking out any feature or movement that would indicate he had been spotted.

  Delicate steps led him up the three stone steps to the door of the house. He placed a soft hand against the door and gave it a gentle push open. Sliding through the small gap, Haung got his first proper look at the inside. Expensive rugs were hung from the walls depicting great battles from ages ago, small lacquered wooden tables supported large decorated vases and statues. He turned left and approached the large door on the main corridor. Through the thick wood of this door he could hear the voices of Shing and the other man.

  Haung wiped a hand through his hair, skimming the water off his forehead and moving strands of hair out of his eyes. He rolled up the sleeves of his robe, freeing his arms and tightened the belt at his waist. Then, suitably fortified, he pushed open the door and strode in. Shing bolted up-right and stumbled away from the table at which he had been sat. The other man sat still and gazed at Haung.

  “Who are you to come into my master’s house like this?” The seated man stroked his thin, oiled, beard between forefinger and thumb.

  “I am Jiin-Wei and,” Haung pointed, “he is coming with me.”

  “Jiin-Wei Haung?” said the seated man and Haung nodded in response. “Interesting that it should be you. You know that you have sealed your wife’s fate tonight.”

  “What do you mean?” Haung stepped forward.

  “You don’t know whose house you have broken into do you?” The man slid his chair back and stood. “Not surprising I suppose. He is used to hiding his true purpose.”

  Haung took another step towards the table, “Tell me.”

  “Oh, I rather think you have worked it out but that is not going to matter is it. You’ll be dead before your wife, but you’ll die knowing you can’t save her.” The man backed up another step and Haung saw, behind the table, an announcement gong with the hammer on a stand before it. “The only downside is that he won’t be here to see it but he’ll take some comfort from that thought.”

  Haung used the last of the extra power in his legs to leap forward, over the table, and land in front of the man. He struck out with a hard fist. The man reacted with more speed than Haung had suspected and dodged out of the way.

  “I’d prefer the guards to deal with you. I do hate getting blood on my evening robes,” the man slid his right foot forward and raised his hands before him, fingers curling into fists, “but I suppose I can spare a few moments.”

  Haung backed away a step and checked the room with a quick glance. Shing was to his left, edging towards the door through which Haung had entered. The table and chairs occupied the centre of the room, the gong now to his right and wall hangings covering any other potential exits. He settled into his own fighting stance, left hand low and right hand guarding his face, feet shoulder width apart and pointing towards his opponent.

  Haung stepped to the right, circling to put the gong at his back and to enable him to see both Shing and his enemy clearly. The downside of this, Haung knew, was that he was further from the door and any escape route, or the ability to block the door and bar entry to any reinforcements.

  “You do not,” Haung spoke quiet words into the silence between them, “threaten my wife.”

  The man smiled and advanced on Haung. A sharp jab from his opponent’s leading hand was easily parried. The follow-up punch was pushed aside by Haung’s forearm. Haung stepped forward, inside his enemy’s reach, and threw two quick punches at his head. The man skipped back out of range, both of Haung’s fists bruising the air only.

  “Not too bad,” the man spoke. “You may actually be worthy of my skills. I have fought and killed Jiin-Wei before and not one has ever come close to beating me. You will fare no better but it will be interesting none the less.”

  “Shut up and fight.” Haung stepped forward only for the man to step back out of reach.

  “This seems unfair, I know your name and you don’t know mine,” the man smiled. “I am Jing Ke.”

  “The assassin,” Haung spat.

  “The warrior for hire,” Jing Ke replied.

  “The murderer, the terrorist.”

  “The guardian, the freedom fighter.” Jing Ke took another step back. “Different sides of the same coin, you and I. It just depends on where you stand and where you are looking from.”

  “Never,” Haung said.

  “Really, are you that naive?” Jing Ke said, “You kill on the duke’s orders, I kill on the orders of my current master. Both of us get paid for these duties. Surely that is what brings us into this situation tonight.”

  “I don’t kill innocent people,” Haung replied.

  “Your wife?” Jing Ke said, “In war, whether political, physical, large or small, there are always casualties. That is the way of the world.”

  “You are not getting anywhere near my wife.” Haung began advancing.

  “Not me. I am going to deal with you, that was always the plan. Your presence here tonight has just moved that forward a few hours. Your wife, well, that is already in hand.” Jing Ke stepped forward, their raised hands almost touching in the centre of the room. “Shing, guard the door.”

  Jing Ke struck first. Another jab followed by a harder strike that forced Haung to back up. Then it was all Haung could do to defend himself against the series of rapid fists, elbows and feet that tried to hit him from every angle. Two or three got through and Haung could feel the bruises form on his upper arms and thigh. He leapt back out of range, collected his thoughts and breath.

  “Are you going to fight back?” Jing Ke taunted.

  Haung skipped forward, leading with a fist strike of his own. Jing Ke raised an arm to block but it had never been Haung’s intent to score a hit with that punch. He pulled the strike up short and instead snapped his right leg out in a straight kick aimed at Jing Ke’s knee. The impact sent the arrogant assassin stumbling backward and Haung tried to capitalise on the opening but his enemy’s defence was back in place, blocking every punch and kick.

  Haung’s vision narrowed, a tunnel focused on Jing Ke’s eyes. An exchange of blows and blocks brought them into a close clinch. Jing Ke smacked a knee into Haung’s bruised thigh. In return, Haung drove his forehead down into the stubby nose of Jing Ke. Warm blood, the tang of iron, painted Haung’s face and lips. Jing Ke fell back, spitting blood from his own mouth. Haung wiped his face, smearing the blood onto his robes.

  Jing Ke reached into his own expensive robes and drew forth a dagger which he held point up. Blood dripped down the oiled beard, a rainstorm of red. Haung drew his own dagger from its hidden scabbard in the small of his back. In asymmetry to Jing Ke, Haung reversed his grip, the dagger pointed down and held close to his forearm.

  “Whose house is this?” Haung asked.

  “You still haven’t worked it out?” Jing Ke spat blood from his mouth as he spoke. “You really are not as intelligent as you should be.”

  Jing Ke jumped forward, his dagger extended before him with his full weight behind it. Haung watched it plunge towards his chest and, at the last moment, parried the blow with his left wrist, striking Jing Ke’s forearm and pushing it out wide. The assassin’s momentum carried him onward. Haung crashed his right elbow into the side of Jing Ke’s blood painted face snapping it up and round. Haung reversed his swing and drove the dagger deep into the side of Jing Ke’s neck and withdrew it quickly. Haung twisted his body and struck the stumbling Jing Ke hard in the chest with a straight palm strike, forcing him away.

  Haung stepped back away from the eruption of blood from the dying man’s throat. He dragged in a lungful of air and placed a hand on the back of a chair for support. Then he screamed in pain as a line of agony sliced its way across his lower back. Haung span around, the tightly gripped dagger leading the way and he
drove it between Shing’s ribs. The merchant collapsed to the floor, a look of surprise on his face, taking Haung’s dagger with him.

  “Marbu, I am coming for you,” Haung vowed, his own warm blood trickling down his back, sticking the silk robe to his skin, as he turned and crashed through the doors.

  Chapter 33

  “I’ll leave you here,” the cart driver said.

  “Thank you for the ride,” Zhou said as he stepped down from the farmer's cart and took a long look at the city of Yaart.

  It was not the same as his first visit all that time ago. The tall towers still poked up above the walls but before them the number of tents had swelled beyond measure. Unlike an army camp, the tents of this new town were placed with no regard to a plan or precision. Some of the fabric homes were made of white canvas and others seemed to be sewn together from whatever the owner could find. As Zhou walked down the straight road approaching the gates, people from either side reached out to him with their wares or bellowed at him from stalls set up in front of the their tents, all trying to sell him trinkets, clothes, and all manner of other goods. A few moments later he realised that, conspicuous by its absence, there was no food for sale.

  After that he focused his gaze beyond the hawkers and sellers to see the truth of the town. The pathways between the tents were slick with mud and small puddles had collected in depressions. Here and there, and usually cowering against the base of a tent, a brave clump of grass poked above the mud. The people of the tent town moved along these paths occasionally stopping to converse with one another in dialects and languages that Zhou did not know, recognise or understand. They all looked downcast but, by their stares and glances, he could feel the strength in the people. These were the resilient people, those who had not already died.

  Zhou paused near a small opening in the tents. On the little piece of clear land, a crowd of children sat peacefully listening to a young woman. Though he could not hear the words above the noise from the street he could recognise the activity taking place, a class. The woman was the teacher and the children her pupils. In all of this, he wondered, who would have time to set up a school.

  The young woman raised her hand, palm outwards, stalling any questions from the children and then she looked up at Zhou. He shuffled his feet and glanced away before looking back to see if she was still staring at him with those dark brown eyes. She was still sat calmly gazing at him and now the seated class had turned their attention to him as well. He bowed and she returned it with a small smile. He was about to turn away when she touched both her eyes and then the middle of her forehead with one finger. Without further comment she turned back to her class and resumed teaching.

  That was a little strange, Zhou thought. But he could not get those dark eyes out of his mind. He loitered, waiting to see if there was anything else but the woman was fully focused on her class.

  He rubbed his thumb along the dryad’s gifted staff and turned a slow full circle, taking in the atmosphere, the sounds, the smell of smoke and the people of tent town. There was something missing and it was teasing the edge of his mind. Back the way he had come the older children were running round, playing a game. One of them fell into the stall of a clothes seller, spilling the clothes from the table and onto the mud below. Zhou waited for the angry shouts but none came. Instead, the children all clustered around and helped the seller dust down and clean up the clothes before re-stacking them.

  Zhou pictured a market seller in Wubei and imagined his reaction to a child ruining his stall. The thought of the stall owner shouting at the children, chasing them with a stick he kept handy for just such an occurrence, made Zhou chuckle. That would have been the normal reaction in his town. He listened to all noises of the street and, whilst there were raised voices, there were no angry shouts or arguments.

  Zhou took a deep breath and closed his eyes, sinking into his mind and reaching, summoning, the spirit to him. When he opened his eyes a few seconds later, the world had changed. A thin film of blue covered everything. Where his gaze rested on the people, he could see bright sparks of blue in the centre of their bodies. Some sparks were brighter than others but everyone had one. When he focused on the sparks, he could just make out smoky filaments that drifted from one person’s spark to another’s. There was a faint web of interconnected sparks throughout the whole area of tent town he could see.

  He turned back to the woman and the class. Each child’s spark was connected by delicate strands of blue to all the children around them and from each child a stronger thread connected them to the teacher. When his gaze rested on her, he recoiled in shock. The young woman was still there but surrounding and overlaying her features, the shape of an animal, a panda.

  She dismissed the class and walked over to him, “The Bear spoke of a new one, but I understood that you were going to the mountain?”

  “You know Boqin?” He felt stupid asking the question.

  “Of course I do,” she smiled. Haung could see her human teeth underneath the sharp, blue tinted transparent canines of the Panda. She pointed, “The Mountain is that way.”

  Zhou turned his head to look, an automatic reaction, realising as he did so, that he would never be able to see the mountain from here. Yet, in the direction she pointed, he could see a large, bright blue flame on the far horizon.

  “I can see it,” he said.

  “And why are you not heading there?” she asked.

  “I have something to do first,” he stated.

  “Revenge won’t bring them back.” The black panda fur around her already dark eyes matched her tone of sadness.

  “I know.” He closed his eyes and swallowed the spirit back down, “But it is something I have to do.”

  “I will not help you and wish that you would turn aside from this path, but I can see that you are set upon it,” she said, the spectre of the Panda now gone from her face. “If you survive your attempt, I can give supplies enough to reach the mountain.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Good luck,” she turned away as she spoke and disappeared amongst the tents. It was then he realised he had not asked her name.

  # # #

  “You’ll have to turn your pack out for a search,” the guard said.

  “Of course.” Zhou began unpacking bottles of ink, sheaves of paper, pouches of fine sand which the guards poked grubby fingers into. “As I said, I am a scribe seeking work in the city. I also picked up a commission on the way to deliver a letter to a prominent businessman in Yaart.”

  “Let’s see the letter,” the second guard said.

  “Here it is.” Zhou handed over the scroll. “Do you know where I can find him?”

  He watched as the guard unfurled the letter and began to read. Like his own city, he swallowed hard at the thought; all guards must be able to read.

  “All seems in order.” The first guard indicated he could re-pack his materials, “You’ll find Meng Li in the merchant quarters. His warehouse and shop are decorated with a large cart and you’ll see his name above the door. Good luck.”

  Zhou nodded to the guards and made his way into the city proper. Wooden buildings, at the most three storeys high, bordered the bustling road. Here the noise was different from that of the tent town and as he walked he let the spirit vision come into his eyes. A cart driver arguing with a shop owner. Small ragged boys stealing fruit and pastries from another shop. Ladies shopping, picking at cloth and turning up their noses at other groups of women who paraded by. Hawkers reaching out to pinch his sleeve, attempting to drag him into their shops. All of them had the glow of spirits but they were contained, shielded and self-contained. There were none of the spirit threads to connect the people together. He felt sad for them, but also for his own city.

  “We’ve lost so much,” he muttered.

  “Lost are you, Sir?” A small round face with dark almond shaped eyes looked up at him. “Perhaps I can help you. Where or who you looking for? Just got into the city? I can guide you. For some silver,
I’ll take you where you want to go. Bit more and I can get you a girl, clean girl, none of the street walkers but someone special. Can get you some nga-pin too, if you want. I can get you anything.”

  Zhou stopped, “Nga-pin?”

  “It’ll cost you,” the little lad said, “but I know where to get it.”

  “What? Why would I want bird droppings?”

  Now it was the boy’s turn to look confused and then the small face broke into a smile. “Where you been? Out in the country? It means Hop. You know, Opium.”

  “I’m not ill.” Zhou knew what opium was, back in his own town it was a popular medicine for folks with aches and pains.

  “No, you mix with the tobacco and smoke it.” The boy fell into step as Zhou resumed his journey.

  “Why?” Zhou asked.

  “Lots of folks are doing it. Comes up the road from Xianggang.” An answer that left Zhou none the wiser.

  “Can you get me to this warehouse?” Zhou gave the boy the name and description. “I might need you again after.”

  “Easy,” and Zhou saw a mercenary glint in the boy's eyes. “You got silver?”

  Zhou nodded and pressed a small silver coin into the boy’s palm.

  “This way then.” The boy sped up and then turned around. “You want some hop too?”

  “No. Least, not yet.” Zhou waved the boy onwards.

  # # #

  The factor read the letter and directed Zhou onwards to a cloth merchant who in turn pointed him in the direction of another. Without his young guide Zhou would have been lost, as the pattern repeated itself six times before he finally got directions to a house in one of the more upmarket parts of town.

  “It’s getting dark and I reckon there's rain on the way. You got a place to stay tonight?” the boy asked.

  “Not yet,” Zhou said. “You know a good place?”

  “I know lots of places. Not all of them nice or good,” the boy smiled. “How much you got to spend?”

  “Somewhere I can get a good night’s sleep and just sleep. Nothing else.” Zhou made sure the boy understood.