by Mark Morris
Soon many breaches were opening in the line of shields, despite the purple soldiers’ best efforts to maintain its integrity. When the Tao Tei did break through, the purple soldiers, aided by the black-armored bear soldiers and the blue-clad female crane troops, fought fiercely, the deer and crane soldiers with their swords, lances and shields, the bear soldiers—who, despite being huge, muscle-bound men, appeared puny in comparison to the Tao Tei—bludgeoning the enemy with mallets and axes.
Within minutes the impeccable organization of the multi-colored army had crumbled, and the battle had become as William and Pero had always known battles to be: a desperate, bloody, brutal skirmish for both victory and survival. Screams of rage and pain combined with the clash of weapons filled the air; the flat, wide battleground on top of the Wall became choked with mangled bodies, and awash with blood.
Weaponless and with his hands still bound together, William pressed himself back against the parapet beside the buttress, feeling vulnerable. For the time being the soldiers in front of them were fighting a fierce rearguard action, holding the Tao Tei at bay, but it would surely only be a matter of time before the creatures broke through the ranks and came for them.
“We need to get these off!” William yelled to Pero above the din of battle, and turned to the stone parapet behind him. In some desperation he stretched his hands, pulling the bound rope taut, and began to rub it up and down against the sharp edge of the parapet.
Pero was looking frantically around. Suddenly his eyes widened. He lurched across to William and nudged him.
“There!”
William turned and looked. On the ground not far away, evidently dropped in the heat of battle, was a small curved hand blade. It looked like one of the knives that the blue-armored crane warriors carried in their waistbands. William would have scurried across to get it if it hadn’t been for the fact that several of the bear soldiers, including the young one who had dropped the keys, were between him and the weapon. They were paying him no attention now, but if he shoved his way past them, especially if it was to arm himself, they would almost certainly do so. He spun towards Pero, frustrated. What could they do? With every second that passed the soldiers in front of them were being pushed further and further back, the Tao Tei surging forward.
Suddenly, from a dark, narrow opening in the Wall, the Westerner they had seen earlier appeared again. He was like some nocturnal animal, emerging from its burrow to sniff the air for signs of danger before darting back underground. On this occasion he had clearly poked his head out to see how the battle was progressing, and from the expression on his narrow, wrinkled face it was evident he didn’t like what he was seeing. His lips puckered and his eyebrows came together in a scowl, deepening the wrinkles on his forehead.
“Hey!” William shouted to attract his attention, though not loud enough to make the bear soldiers turn round. The lean Westerner, who was only a few feet from the blade, flashed a glance in William and Pero’s direction. As soon as he did, both men indicated the knife with urgent rolls of their eyes and exaggerated nods of their heads. Pero held up his bound hands and grimaced, then mimed as best he could his wish that the man should grab the knife and toss it towards them. The man hesitated a moment, then he scuttled forward and gave the blade a kick, sending it sliding in their direction. As he retreated back into the dark slit from whence he had come, William revised his opinion of the man. He wasn’t like a nocturnal animal at all. He was like a cockroach.
The man, whoever he was, had done them a favor, though, for which he was grateful. Sliding across the stony ground, the knife came to rest against the toe of Pero’s boot. Quickly he dipped to pick it up—but as he did so, the melee of struggling, battling soldiers in front of them suddenly seemed to burst apart, bodies flying everywhere. One of them stumbled against Pero, who fell forward, his foot inadvertently knocking against the knife and sending it skittering away. As Pero scrambled after it on his elbows and knees, there came a shattering, high-pitched screech of rage, and a Tao Tei leaped into the space occupied by the scattered soldiers. It homed in on William, who backed away, his hands still bound and weaponless. With another triumphant screech, the Tao Tei lunged for him.
The black-armored bear soldiers, who had had their backs to William and Pero, now turned. The young one, seeing the Tao Tei at such close quarters, instantly froze, but his bigger, silent companion and two other black-armored men rushed forward. The two newcomers swung the mallets and axes they held in their hands, while the other—William and Pero’s erstwhile guard—snatched up a discarded lance and thrust it at the advancing creature. The lance pierced the creature’s shoulder, causing it to bellow with rage and swing away from William and towards its three attackers. The men bravely waded in to the fray, but they were no match for the massive Tao Tei.
Moving like lightning, the Tao Tei swept out a massive claw and instantly shredded two of the men. Its black hooked talons ripped through their armour as though it was paper, and through their bodies beneath as though they were nothing at all. The men’s faces instantly went slack with horror and agony, and blood and innards began to gush from the rents in their midriffs. Both fell forward simultaneously, their armored bodies falling on to slippery piles of their own unraveling intestines. The third man hesitated, horrified at the ease and abruptness with which his companions had died. It was a fatal hesitation. The Tao Tei lunged like a shark and grabbed the man in its mouth, rearing up and shaking him as a dog might shake a rabbit.
The man screamed, his upper body inside the Tao Tei’s mouth, his legs kicking in desperation. Then his screams were abruptly cut off as the Tao Tei bit him in half. The man’s legs, still twitching, dropped to the ground with a clanking thump.
Pero had taken advantage of the distraction to grab the knife, which he was now holding awkwardly, the blade turned inward as he attempted to saw at his own bonds. It was a difficult process as his hands were both slippery and sticky with the blood oozing from his chafed wrists. He winced as the blade slipped again, nicking his skin and opening a fresh wound.
Then William yelled, “Pero!” and he looked up, to find the Tao Tei, its open maw blood-stained and dripping, bearing down on him.
Pero quickly turned the blade round, holding it out before him, already knowing how pathetically inadequate it would be against such a creature. Even so, he was a fighter and he would go down facing his enemy. He braced himself as the Tao Tei barreled towards him, thinking that this, at least, would be a far better way to go than dying ignominiously on the end of a rope.
Before the Tao Tei could reach him, however, help appeared from an unexpected source. The young bear warrior, who had frozen in terror as his comrades were torn apart in front of him, suddenly found the courage to lunge at the creature from the side, his long lance held out before him. With a shrill shriek, as though channeling all his terror and rage into one decisive action, he plunged the lance deep into the creature’s back.
The Tao Tei howled, swinging round so violently that the lance was not only torn from the young warrior’s hands, but actually became dislodged from the creature’s back and flew through the air. Although the lance-wound was nothing more than a scratch as far as the Tao Tei was concerned, it was still enough of an irritant for it to turn its attentions from Pero to the young bear warrior. Watching the creature veer towards him the boy’s eyes went wide with terror, and he desperately grabbed a discarded, bloodstained shield from the ground. As the Tao Tei attacked, its jagged-toothed maw opening wide, the bear warrior thrust the shield forward, and more by luck than judgment managed to jam it between the creature’s massive jaws.
The Tao Tei roared in frustration and bit down, the thick metal shield already bending and twisting in its powerful jaws. The momentary delay, though, helped save the young warrior’s life. Behind him William had leaped, and though his hands were still bound in front of him, managed to catch the bear warrior’s jettisoned lance as it flew through the air. As he came down from his leap, William spu
n in an almost balletic parabola, a maneuver that ended with him standing side by side with the young bear warrior, facing the looming Tao Tei. Even as the shield, under enormous pressure from the creature’s massive jaws, began to splinter, William rammed the lance forward directly into the center of the monster’s exposed throat. As the Tao Tei gurgled and staggered back, Pero, who had finally succeeded in freeing his hands, jumped forward with a round, sharp-edged shield, and using it like a massive blade, slammed it with force against the side of the creature’s neck.
The result was spectacular. The creature’s massive head flew from its shoulders, spun into the air and landed with a thud at Pero’s feet. Acting instinctively, Pero leaped back, putting himself out of range of the still chomping teeth, then smashed the head with the heavy shield, as though crushing an oversized bug. The skull cracked and the head caved in, green blood gushing from its mouth as its grinding maw finally became still.
As Pero stepped forward to cut William’s bonds, William glanced at the young bear warrior, who was gaping in shock at the spectacle before him. He could tell instantly, from the boy’s thousand-yard stare, that this was his first experience of battle, and that it had traumatized him.
But there was no time for sentiment or reassurance. All around them the battle was still raging. Looking around for weapons, William spotted a fallen archer, his eyes open in death, his red armour stained redder with blood. Close to his outstretched hand was his crossbow. William scrambled across to it and snatched it up. He examined the weapon for a moment with expert eyes, then smashed the crossbow against the stone ground, knocking its trigger and stock free. When he was done he was holding a weapon he felt far more comfortable with—a conventional bow. As he helped himself to the dead archer’s supply of arrows, Pero rushed up to him, having grabbed a pair of lances.
“Not a time to be choosy, William,” he yelled above the din of battle, his white teeth showing through his beard in a grin of adrenaline-fuelled exhilaration.
“No, just quick,” William said.
As if to prove his point, several Tao Tei suddenly broke through the massed defenses of the warriors in front of them, and charged at the two men.
With weapons in their now unbound hands, William and Pero switched to full fighting mode. Using his experience, skill and versatility, Pero darted and spun, thrusting forward with his lances, aiming for the creatures’ exposed and vulnerable parts—their throats, their eyes. William, meanwhile, showed his prodigious skill with the bow, grabbing a handful of arrows from the dead archer’s purloined quiver and holding them between the fingers of his pull hand, before loading and firing with such dazzling speed and accuracy that his movements were almost a blur.
Between them the men dispatched half a dozen Tao Tei in less than a minute, the creatures’ dead bodies, their eyes reduced to leaking jelly, tumbling so heavily to the ground that the impact seemed to shake the foundations of the Wall itself.
In a momentary lull Pero pointed to his left. William looked, just as a weird, high-pitched scream reached his ears, to see the skinny, cadaverous Westerner scuttling towards them, having apparently been wheedled from his hiding place like a rat from its hole. He had a Tao Tei on his tail, and was running in an odd, panicked zigzag fashion in an obvious attempt to shake his pursuer. Spotting William, who was drawing his bow, he scrambled towards him, but in the act of looking up fell headlong, his skinny arms shooting out. The Tao Tei roared in triumph and sprang towards its helpless prey—just as William let loose one arrow, then another, each of which found their mark, puncturing the creature’s eyes and killing it stone dead.
The Westerner scuttled forward as the Tao Tei fell, barely avoiding being crushed by the creature’s body. He ducked behind the two men and cowered there as they continued the battle, Tao Tei bearing down on them from all angles.
Pero, as skillful and adaptable as he was strong and ferocious, was grabbing anything he could use from the ground, converting whatever he touched into a lethal weapon. He slashed and pummeled and thrust and stabbed, until his body was liberally doused in the stinking green blood of his enemies.
William, meanwhile, continued to grab arrows from the quiver that he had slung over his shoulder, to load and fire them with almost supernatural speed and accuracy into the advancing creatures’ eyes.
But the Tao Tei kept coming. It was an endless tide of jagged teeth, hooked black talons and green, plated flesh. Grabbing another handful of arrows, William heard them clattering about loosely in the quiver behind him, and realized he was running out. And the advancing horde of Tao Tei, now trampling over the heaped bodies of Wall warriors and their fellow creatures alike, were still coming too fast for him to try to retrieve some of the arrows he had already fired.
If we don’t retreat, he thought, we’re finished. But retreat where? They were hemmed in. They had nowhere to go.
He was just wondering whether it was worth leaping for one of the trebuchets, scrambling up it to get a more elevated vantage point, when, without warning, a black-armored warrior in front of him was smashed aside and a massive open mouth came out of nowhere, the multiple rows of jagged teeth stained with human blood.
William raised his bow in a flash, though even as he was doing it he knew he was going to be too late. His vision was full of nothing but teeth when a lance shot past his head from behind, so fast and close that it ruffled his hair and grazed his ear, and plunged unerringly into the creature’s eye.
As the creature shuddered and dropped to the ground directly in front of him, William half-turned. A blue cape swept past his eyes, then settled in rippling folds, revealing its owner, who appeared to have dropped from nowhere. It was the commander of the blue-armored crane warriors who had interrogated him, and who he had last seen standing on top of the battlements just before the Tao Tei had swept up and over it. William barely had time to acknowledge her, however, before another Tao Tei broke through the ranks of soldiers and hurtled towards them.
The crane commander turned, but now she was unarmed, the lance she’d been holding still jutting from the writhing Tao Tei’s eye. Ducking around her, William raised his bow again and fired two arrows in quick succession—one into the advancing creature’s left eye, one into its right. As the Tao Tei dropped like a stone, the crane commander flashed William a look of gratitude. Momentarily he lowered his bow, acknowledging the look with a nod.
* * *
Splashed liberally in green blood, General Shao had descended from his command tower, leaving Wang up there alone, and was now standing shoulder to shoulder with the men and women under his orders, embroiled in the heat of battle. Fending off attacking Tao Tei with a lance and shield that were both coated in green blood, he instinctively glanced up as another high, ululating sound rent the air. It was so loud and piercing that it cut through the clashing din of battle as easily as a sword slashing through soft flesh. For a moment everything seemed to stop, Tao Tei and Wall warriors alike temporarily frozen into immobility. Then, without warning, the Tao Tei began to retreat, dragging their dead with them. Before the astonished eyes of General Shao and his fellow warriors, the Tao Tei drained from the battlefield in a green wave, swinging themselves ape-like over the battlements, before descending the Wall and flowing back towards their waiting Queen and the jade mountain beyond.
* * *
William and Pero watched, stunned, as the Tao Tei retreated en masse. All around them, Wall warriors in black, red, yellow, purple and blue armour were standing around open-mouthed, barely able to believe that the battle was over and that they had survived. The upper surface of the Great Wall was strewn with mangled bodies and awash with blood, both red and green. It was a typical battlefield in the aftermath of a savage conflict—except for one thing. There was not a single enemy body, or even a single body part, left behind. As the Tao Tei had retreated they had gathered up every single one of their fallen comrades and taken them with them.
Ever the soldier, and all too accustomed to premature victori
es, William wandered around, grabbing stray arrows from the ground as he kept a watchful eye on the retreating enemy. When he had picked up as many arrows as he could find, he rejoined Pero, who was still clutching a sword as he stared at the river in the distance, its water churning and boiling again as the Tao Tei army crossed it.
“What God made those things?” William muttered.
Pero waited until the last of the Tao Tei were out of sight, then he dropped the sword he was holding and slumped into a squatting position. “None we know.”
A mist was rising up from the river now, like it had before when the Tao Tei had crossed over. William couldn’t help thinking of the mist as a veil between this world and the next, or perhaps more accurately as a gateway that led from and into Hell.
Pero spoke again. “Think they’ll hang us now?”
“I could use the rest,” William said, smiling wryly.
He glanced at his friend, but then realized that Pero was not looking at him, but at something behind him. William turned slowly to find that the blue-armored crane commander, the big, black-armored bear commander, the dapper little strategist and a huge group of bedraggled soldiers spattered in green blood were standing motionless, staring implacably at them.
Realizing he was still holding the bow, William dropped it to the ground and raised his hands.
Still nobody moved. William swept his gaze across the array of exhausted, staring faces, trying to find something—some spark of emotion, be it friendliness or animosity. Beside him, still squatting, Pero’s heavy-lidded eyes were drooping and his body was swaying from side to side. Despite the potential predicament they were in, the Spaniard looked almost drunk with fatigue.
