The Warring States, Books 1-3

by Greg Strandberg

  Hui pulled his head out and nodded at his men.

  “The royal bedroom,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t appear as though anyone’s inside, but we’ll check it anyway.”

  He turned back and eased the door open further and slipped inside, keeping his crossbow to his face as he moved over to the windows to take hold of one of the curtains. After giving another cursory glance around the room he pulled it aside, bathing the room in light. Out of the corner of his eye he detected movement near the far wall.

  “There!” he shouted to his men, pointing toward a large closet near the bed.

  The men moved quickly, their swords drawn, and after a moment one of the men gave a sharp laugh.

  “What is it?” Hui asked curiously.

  “Looks to be the Duke’s wife,” a soldier said as he dragged the woman away from the wall and into the light.

  Hui stared at the woman and could obviously see that she was of royal blood despite her disheveled hair and clothing.

  “Where is the Duke?” Hui asked as he stepped up to her.

  The woman stared up at him indignantly and Hui slapped her across the face so hard that the soldier holding her arm lost his grip and she fell to the floor. Her hand immediately went to her reddening face and she stared up at Hui with hatred in her eyes.

  Hui leveled his crossbow at her head. “I won’t ask a second time,” he said firmly, and fear began to replace the hatred in her eyes.

  “He’s in the throne room,” the woman began, but Hui cut her off with a kick to the chest that sent her sprawling back to the floor.

  “The throne room is on the first floor and flooded,” he said angrily. “Another lie and you’ll lose your tongue.”

  “I’m here,” a voice said loudly from near the closet that the woman had been hiding near. “Don’t hurt her!”

  Hui turned his attention in the direction of the voice but could see nothing, and then the closet door opened and a man even more disheveled and haggard looking than the woman stepped out.

  The soldiers around Hui chuckled, but he silenced them with an upraised hand.

  “Open the curtains,” he said to the soldiers as he kept his eyes on the man that had emerged from the closet.

  The soldiers rushed to the windows and soon the entire room was awash in sunlight. The man brought his hand up to his eyes to shield them for a moment, then lowered it to stare defiantly at Hui.

  Hui lowered his crossbow slightly as he stared at the man.

  “Duke Wu, I presume. Where are your soldiers?”

  The man nodded. “I am Duke Wu, and what is left of my palace guard are in the room behind me.”

  Hui looked over at the soldier behind him and then nodded his head toward the closet the Duke had emerged from. The soldier rushed to the closet, looked it up and down for a moment, then stepped inside to disappear into its depths. A moment later he emerged and nodded at Hui.

  “There are a dozen men inside a hidden room,” the soldier said.

  Hui nodded. “Bring them out.”

  The soldier nodded and several others rushed to the closet while Duke Wu took a few steps closer to Hui.

  “Hasn’t there already been enough death for today?” he pleaded with Hui. “I urge you to spare my men.”

  Hui ignored him as the men began to come out of the closet, their clothes ragged but their determination in resisting Hui evident from their eyes. All were unarmed, but Hui knew that given the chance each of them would rush at him with their bare hands if they could. In a few moments the ten men were lined up in front of the closet and the rest of Hui’s soldiers had come back into the room.

  “That’s all of them,” the first soldier who’d gone into the room said.

  “Where are the rest of your men?” Hui asked the Duke.

  “They were manning the walls of the city,” Duke Wu said angrily. “The siege has nearly killed us all. These are all the men I have left.”

  “And your sons?” Hui asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “Dead,” Duke Wu said after a moment, his eyes falling to the floor. “Killed on the walls by your men more than a year ago.”

  Hui nodded and stared at the Duke. “Kill them,” he said to his men.

  The Duke lowered and shook his head as Hui’s men raised up their crossbows and fired at his men before they could react to the order and try to fight. The room filled with groans as each man went down with a bolt in the chest, the Duke’s wife letting out a moan.

  “Was that necessary?” the Duke asked when the men were dead, his eyes falling on Hui once again.

  Hui didn’t answer as he turned to the nearest soldier.

  “Bind their hands and take them back to the boats,” he said. “The Duke has a dinner engagement with General Yue.”

  EIGHT

  Word that Duke Wu had been captured spread quickly through the drowned city and to the army camps outside. By the time Hui’s men rowed through the shattered gates with the Duke and his wife tied securely in their boat, a large crowd of friendly soldiers stood atop the embankments cheering them. Hui waved nonchalantly at the adoration but also kept a weary eye on the crowd. He knew full well that a Zhongshan soldier could have crept into the Wei Army ranks during the excitement, one that might see it as more prudent to put an arrow or crossbow bolt into the Duke than have him paraded in front of the opposing army.

  No such soldier appeared, however, and Hui’s boat was soon bumping up alongside the embankment. The soldiers climbed out while Hui helped them hoist up the bound Duke and his wife before he too climbed up.

  Ximen began to worry as the soldiers pressed in tightly along the two embankments, both of which still supported the long channel of water from the river.

  “We’ve got to get these men off of the embankments,” he shouted to Yue over the noise of the crowd.

  Yue nodded. His earlier attempts to get the soldiers back down into the camps had failed. Once they’d heard that the Duke was coming out of the city bound and tied by Marquis Wen’s grandson, there could be little done to control their eagerness at catching a glimpse of the prize they’d worked two long years to achieve. When Hui’s boat finally appeared all orderliness vanished, and even the higher-ranking officers under Yue failed to contain their enthusiasm.

  “The only way we’re going to get these men off the embankments is if we lead the Duke down off of them first,” Yue shouted.

  Ximen turned to Zhai and Marquis Wen, both men standing still amid the chaos as they watched Hui come up the embankment.

  “Let’s go down to the flat plain behind the camps,” he shouted to the two men. “I’m afraid the embankments won’t support so many people for long.”

  Wen looked about the crowd of soldiers as if seeing it for the first time, then nodded.

  “Let us go down, then. But first let my grandson bring Duke Wu to me.”

  Ximen nodded, although he didn’t like it. The embankments could collapse at any moment, and then what was meant to be a celebration would quickly become catastrophe.

  All sense had not vanished from the soldiers at the news and then sight of the Duke. Once Hui had gotten up to the top of the embankment they parted in front of him, opening up a long corridor of empty space leading toward Marquis Wen. Hui wiped the dust from his robes and straightened his back, then walked up behind Duke Wu and his wife and gently pushed them forward so that they’d start walking the distance between them and their fate. The crowd suddenly fell silent as the three figures moved down the empty corridor between them, the three pairs of footsteps on the hard-packed dirt the only sound.

  Hui held his head up as he progressed while Duke Wu kept his low. When they were less than twenty feet from Marquis Wen, however, the Duke rose his head up high and looked on as the ruler of a state should, Hui thought when he saw the sudden change. His stride gained greater purpose, something the soldiers around them didn’t miss, and a collective gasp of awe escaped from them. Even the Duke’s wife, who had been sullen and downcast since ente
ring the boat, perked up at her husband’s obvious return to form.

  “Duke Wu, we meet again,” Marquis Wen said when the three stopped five feet from him. “It has been many years.”

  “I wish it could have been under different circumstances that we meet again after so long,” Wu replied forcefully, his words carrying to all the men gathered around.

  “I’ve no doubt that you do,” Wen replied without a trace of a smile, “but such is not the case.” Wen turned slightly and raised his arm up toward Yue who stood a step behind him. “Do you formally surrender your city to General Yue, the man who has done so much to ensure that the two-year long siege was carried out as humanely as possible?”

  “Do you call drowning a city under hundreds of thousands of gallons of water humane?” Wu shot back, his eyes narrowed in anger at Yue.

  “Many of your people still live,” Wen said, unperturbed by the remark. “Such would not be the case if you’d continued to hold the gates shut against us. You should be thankful, Wu, that we spared your people the horrible fate of cannibalism and then the slow and painful death of starvation that inevitably would have followed. Both would have resulted if we had let you continue in your stubbornness.”

  Wu looked away from Wen and at Yue for the first time. “It is your own people that seem to hold cannibalism in such high regard.”

  Yue took a step forward but Wen held up his arm and the general stopped.

  “There have been many unfortunate incidents here during the past two years,” he said slowly, “incidents which have touched both of our armies. I am deeply saddened, Wu, to hear that both of your sons were killed while manning the walls of the city.”

  Wu’s head dropped down for an instant, but he quickly raised it up again. “And what do you know about losing a son, Wen? How can that injustice ever touch you when you hide behind your high walls in Anyi?”

  “I know nothing about it, and pray to Shangdi that I never do,” Wen replied coolly.

  Wu scoffed and shook his head. “So what is to be my fate then? Will you allow me to be cooked and eaten by your trusted general?”

  Wen shook his head. “No, Wu, I don’t condone cannibalism and will spare you from that gruesome fate. I cannot, however, allow your actions toward General Yue’s son to go unpunished. To kill an unarmed messenger bearing official correspondence is unconscionable during war. An example must be made here today of what happens to those that break that solemn tradition.”

  Wu tensed for the first time since the meeting started and it seemed to Hui that some of the Duke’s royal bearing slipped away from him as his shoulders sagged slightly.

  “I will not let General Yue punish you as he would wish,” Wen called out loudly for all the assembled soldiers to hear, “but I will see that Yue does get the chance to correct the wrong done to him and his only son.” Wen paused, his words hanging in the air, and the tension of anticipation could be felt by all.

  “I call for a trial by chariot!” Wen yelled out.

  The soldiers erupted into cheers in the same instant that Duke Wu lost all semblance of royalty and collapsed to one knee. Marquis Wen smiled at the mockery of fealty that his words had caused before Hui’s men rushed up and lifted the Duke to his feet. A few quick words were exchanged between them and Zhai, and then the Minister of War raised his arms up for a path to open up before them down to the empty plain below.

  “I think that went rather well,” Liu said to Wen, leaning in to whisper into the Marquis’s ear so he could be heard over the cheers of the crowd.

  “Now all Yue has to do is ride straight,” Wen replied.

  The mass of soldiers spilled down the embankments and into the plain behind their camps and beside the road to the city. The area was flat and empty, used for drills and combat practice, and it would prove to be an ideal spot for the event to take place. By the time that Duke Wu had been marched down the slopes and to the plain the soldiers had formed a tight circle fifty yards apart on each side, their bodies pressed so closely together that nothing could pass between them. They did give way as a lone chariot pulled by a single black horse was driven through their ranks and into the center of the circle. The two men atop it jumped out, shovels in their hands. They immediately set to work digging, and by the time that Duke Wu was escorted through the mass of men they’d nearly completed a five-foot hole in the ground.

  Zhai raised his arms up high over his head and the crowd fell silent.

  “Today Duke Wu of the State of Zhongshan will undergo a trial by chariot,” he said loudly, his voice carrying over the hundreds of men crammed in tightly around him, and the thousands that stood beyond. “The Duke will be buried up to his neck in the ground and General Yue Yang, blindfolded, will be given three chances to run him down.”

  A cheer rose up from the crowd and Zhai again raised his arms for silence.

  “If, on the third pass by the chariot, Duke Wu still lives, then he will be dug up from the ground and set free.”

  A loud groan followed by booing and laughter followed that announcement as Zhai walked back to Marquis Wen and the others around him. Duke Wu had already been lowered into the hole and the two workers were filling in the area around him with dirt, but he could still shift his shoulders slightly, and turned enough to see Yue.

  “Make it quick,” he said to Yue, who stood over him.

  “Like you did for my son?” Yue asked mockingly, but Duke Wu just looked down at the ground quickly filling around him and said nothing.

  Marquis Wen pulled Yue aside then, clapped his hands onto the general’s shoulders, and looked sternly into his face.

  “You have three passes, Yue; do not make me regret my decision here today.”

  “I will not, Sire,” Yue said deferentially. “Thank you for this opportunity.”

  Wen nodded and turned around to look at the crowd of soldiers around them, raising his arm up so Yue would look as well.

  “Study the circle well in these last few moments, Yue,” Wen said. “I’ve seen these contests many times, and the men that study their surroundings and use their ears to listen are the ones that are victorious.”

  Yue nodded and looked around him. The workers completed their task and Ximen walked up to Wen.

  “We’re ready, Sire.”

  Wen nodded and walked back up to Wu once again. The Duke’s head was the only part of him visible above the earth, a sight that Wen would have found slightly comical if the consequences to both of them weren’t so dire. Duke Wu had a very high chance of being killed, but if he was not, Marquis Wen would look like a fool in front of his entire army as the Duke was allowed to go free. Such was the custom of the contest, one going back centuries and which could not be altered under any circumstance, as both men knew.

  “Perhaps I will be in a similar position one day,” Wen said quietly to Wu.

  “Each man has his fate, Wen,” Wu replied. “Wei cannot remain strong forever.”

  Wen nodded in silence at Wu’s words before he walked toward Yue and the chariot, nodding to the men around him so they’d begin walking toward the crowd of soldiers on the edge of the circle.

  “Ready?” Wen asked as he directed Yue to the chariot.

  “I’ve been waiting for this chance since my son was killed,” Yue said.

  Wen nodded. “I know.”

  Both men stepped onto the chariot and Yue took the reins in his hands and steered the horse to the edge of the circle then turned it around so that the chariot was once again facing Duke Wu, his head barely visible above the hard-packed ground around him. Marquis Wen reached into his robes and pulled out the red cloth that Ximen had given back to him earlier that morning and tied it around Yue’s head, making it tight and secure without even a hint of light allowed to pass through. When he was satisfied he took the reins of the chariot from Yue and slapped the horses hard. The animal jerked at the sudden hit and the roar of the crowd that erupted. Wen steered the chariot within a foot of the cheering men, making three complete circui
ts of the circle before returning to the same spot and pointing the chariot at Duke Wu, buried twenty-five yards away.

  “It is up to you now, general,” Wen said as he handed Yue the reins and hopped off the back of the chariot before slowly walking to where his advisors, son, and grandson were standing.

  A hush fell over the throng of soldiers and all eyes went to Yue blindfolded in the chariot. Several minutes went by, and many of the soldiers closest to Yue thought they saw the general’s lips move, perhaps in a silent prayer to Shangdi for success. Then, with a loud cry Yue rose up his hands and cracked the reins hard on the horse and the chariot rushed forward toward Duke Wu. A great cheer went up from the crowd, building in pitch the closer Yue got to the buried duke. Duke Wu for his part remained passive and silent, his mouth firmly shut and his eyes showing neither fear or worry as the chariot drew closer behind him.

  The cheer built to a crescendo as Yue thundered toward Wu, then died down to a disappointed groan as Yue and the chariot harmlessly passed the duke by a distance of several feet. Yue heard the crowd and drew up the reins, slowing the horse and chariot and turning it around as he neared the edge of the crowd opposite from where he’d started. Several of the soldiers near him shouted out directions and he steered the chariot as best he could, aligning it to point at the Duke according to their words.

  The soldiers murmurs began to rise again as they saw that Yue was readying to make his second pass, then grew into wild cheering as the general cracked the reins once again. The horse neighed loudly and was off, the soldiers cheer rising to build higher and higher as Yue approached the Duke. Wu’s eyes grew large, for he could see the chariot coming straight at him this time, but he clenched his jaw tightly, refusing to give Yue and Wen the pleasure of seeing or hearing him cry out.