by Justin Hill
Shulien put a copper coin into the bowl, and the old lady slipped it into the folds of her sash and shuffled on. Shulien’s gaze followed her.
“Something wrong?” Mule Wang, her driver, said as he hitched the pony to the front of the two-wheeled carriage. He was skinny and talkative and she was happy to let him talk. It took the pressure from her. “Sure you don’t want to wait for the caravan to be assembled?”
“No. They will be too slow. I have to be there before the next full moon. It’s urgent.”
“Really?”
“It is. Life and death, really.”
“Whose?”
Shulien laughed. “A friend of mine died. Well, my patron. Duke Te.”
“Duke Te?” Mule Wang said. “The Duke Te?”
Shulien nodded. It was odd to hear of Duke Te being spoken about with such reverence. She had known him since she was a child. Her father had worked for him as a guard, and they had visited the duke’s hall many times when he was the governor of their province. She remembered him as a kind and gentle man, who turned a little to fat in his middle years, and sported long, slender moustaches, and a simple round black cap. One day, when Shulien was five or six, she was allowed in to see the duke and he had slipped her a sesame cracker, turned to her father and said, “Your daughter is very pretty. Will you teach her the Iron Way?”
Her father had smiled wanly. “Her mother wants her to marry.”
But the young Shulien had leaped up and down at the chance. “Yes, please, Father! Please! Teach me, teach me, teach me!”
“Let us see,” her father had said.
Her father, who had worked as a guard for traveling merchants and scholars, had served the duke faithfully, and when he had fallen foul of corrupt local magistrates, it was Duke Te who had saved him from being beaten with the bamboo pole. Since then faithfulness and loyalty had deepened between the families, until Shulien had come to think of the duke as a second father. He had spoken up for her many times, in particular when the day came for her feet to be bound.
“Please don’t let them break my toes,” Shulien had said. “I want to be a warrior, not a housewife. Will you speak to my parents for me, please?”
“I think you would be wise to teach her,” Duke Te had said, and when her mother had protested, the duke had spoken to her as well and won her around.
“Do not bind this girl’s feet,” he said. “Her future is finer than that of a wife and mother. She could be a warrior.”
“My fear is that the Iron Way is not one for a woman. She will die alone and lonely,” her mother had said.
It was only to Duke Te that Shulien had admitted that she wished she had married Mubai when she’d had the chance. “You were faithful to Silent Wolf’s memory,” he told her.
“But I did not know him,” she had answered.
“He was the man your father chose for you. And he chose well. I knew Silent Wolf before his death. He was a hard and determined fighter. But he was lost, as are many who travel the Iron Way.”
Shulien sat for a while, letting the past rise around her and fill her thoughts. “Yes, the Duke Te. And I want to be there at his funeral.”
Mule Wang hurried to strap the pony into place. “Well, let me get the pony hitched and we shall be off!” he said.
Shulien had hired Mule Wang two days before to take her the last stage of the way to Beijing. “I started with mules,” he had explained as she agreed a price. “But I saved money. Now I buy ponies. I have ponies, my son has ponies, my brothers have ponies, even the brothers of my wife have ponies! But still men call me Mule Wang! Ha!”
The cart was a simple construction: two large wheels and a small lattice-covered carriage on the back. As Shulien stepped up she saw that it was almost filled with sacks of wheat and fresh cotton mattresses and embroidered shoes of the type that village girls made for other women’s marriages. She turned and looked at him. “Where do I sit?”
“I bought those this morning.” Mule Wang frowned as he slapped the cotton sacks aside. “These will make you more comfortable,” he said. “The last stretch of the road is not so good these days.”
Shulien squeezed herself between the wheat sacks and bags of raw cotton and then he handed her pack back to her. It sat on her lap like a fat child. She could not move left or right or forward. She felt like a pig in a wicker basket being carried to market.
Mule Wang grinned. “Good?”
Shulien made a non-committal movement of her head.
Mule Wang grinned as he jumped up onto the lip of the carriage and pulled out his whip. “Ya!” he shouted and the cart lurched forward. Shulien let out a weary sigh. However far you travel, the saying went, the road will lead you back home.
It was not the same for her, she thought. Travel always took her away from home. It took her back to the past as well, a place she did not want to go.
It was the end of winter. The wind was cold, but the fields were busy with peasants ploughing the yellow soil, while the women followed behind, beating drums to frighten off the crows.
When the sun shone it was a pleasant time to travel. The air grew warm, neither too hot nor dry, the scent of wood fires on the breeze. The winds were gentle and women were sweeping out their houses, hanging their thick cotton mattresses in the sun to air. Spring was nearly here, and then it would be summer. Shulien’s mind rested on the thought of warmth and light and plenty. She was startled when Mule Wang spoke.
“Duke Te was the son of the Emperor?”
“Yes,” Shulien said. “The third son. He cared deeply for the kingdom. Heaven is high, and the Emperor is far away, men say, but Duke Te saw there was injustice and was determined to fight it. He brought the best warriors to his household, and sent them out into the world, to right wrongs.”
“Wa!” Mule Wang said. He seemed speechless for a moment. “A good man!” There was a pause. “To think I am carrying a friend of the son of the Emperor in my lowly horse cart,” he said. “I will tell my sons and brothers when I get home and they will want to know all about you!”
Shulien smiled. It was not so exciting, she thought. She knew. She had lived every minute of it. Much of her life seemed a little dull.
“What is his house like? How many pigs does he keep? How many chickens?”
“His house is a palace. He has fifty courtyards, three whole gardens, and more than a hundred servants. He has whole farms to feed his household. More chickens than a village could eat in a year! And more treasures besides . . .”
“Wa!” Mule Wang said. “What does he do with all those houses? Does he have fifty wives?”
“No,” she said. “One wife, four concubines. No more than is fitting. The courtyards are for his sons and their sons, and their wives and concubines as well.”
“Sounds like a city,” he said.
Shulien nodded. It was: and there were other things hidden there. Secret and deadly things that needed an Imperial duke to hold and protect.
On the second day they reached the top of the White Cloud Pass. Behind them the flats were striped with the last ragged crop of winter cabbages. Before them the Beijing plain was dark and brown and dusty. The Great Canal gleamed with sunlight. An eagle soared above their heads, wings outstretched, gliding effortlessly on the rising currents.
“So how do you know Duke Te?” Mule Wang said.
“Through a friend . . .” Shulien trailed off. Mule Wang nodded sadly but said nothing.
The wind was harsh so high in the mountains. Shulien could smell incense on the breeze. It was the Grave-Sweeping Festival, a pleasant day when families carried picnics up into the mountains and left offerings for their ancestors. Who would sweep her grave when she was gone, Shulien wondered. She had no family. No children to carry out the sacrifices for her ghost. Her father was gone, her fiancé was killed long ago, and even Mubai had fallen to Jade Fox. She alo
ne had survived, lingering uncertainly into the autumn of her days.
Mubai’s death had hurt the most. Perhaps it was not her destiny to be happy in this world. The wind moaned through the lattice screens of the carriage. Outside she saw high crags and lone trees, clinging by their roots to the overhanging rocks. Beneath them the cliff was crumbling. How long until they fell? she thought.
Shulien leaned against the rough sack of cotton and tried to sleep, but the jolts of the carriage kept throwing her from side to side. The conversation seemed to hang, unresolved. “I must go and pay my respects,” she said finally. “And there are other things I must concern myself with. Serious matters,” she sighed, for which she felt too old.
That evening they camped under Vulture Peak. The pony chomped on its nosebag of grain, and Mule Wang got a fire going despite the wind that blew the flames sideways against the night dark; sparks, like fireflies, tumbling back up the pass before fading from view.
Shulien used the last of the daylight to climb up the rocky slope to Vulture Peak itself: a great hunk of hard granite that stuck out of the cliff like a beak. It used to be famous as a place for warriors to meet. When men fought on Vulture Peak only one ever came down alive.
She reached the spot just as the sun was turning red and hung low on the horizon, the bottom lost in mist and dust.
She had never been up here before. She stood here now, and imagined fighting. The way was narrow, the edges were sheer. She paused on the lip and looked down and the wind clawed at her, blew her robes tight against her legs. It was a long way down. Any man who fell would surely die.
When she came back down to the fire it was fully dark, the stars were gleaming overhead, and the nearly full moon rose in the east: yellow at first, then clean and white as it ascended from the clutches of the earth and into the sky.
Mule Wang had a small wok he used to heat oil. She had smelled the garlic as she came down, heard the hiss of the fat as he threw in noodles.
They were cooked now and sitting in a chipped white porcelain bowl, the noodles rising like an island of snakes, a generous spoonful of tofu, black beans and red chili flakes sitting on top.
“Eat!” Mule Wang said. He offered her a bowl of picked garlic, and she took one and bit into it: it was soft and sweet and sharp, but it did not shift her melancholy.
Shulien ate slowly. She had little appetite. When she put the bowl down he looked at it hungrily.
“You’re finished?” he said.
She nodded.
“Can I?”
“Of course,” she said.
Mule Wang took her bowl and started shoveling the noodles.
“My wife says she does not know where the food goes,” he said. “You eat like a pig but you are as skinny as a rabbit! Look at me—I am!”
Shulien smiled. “I had a friend who died here. His name was Silent Wolf. Did you ever hear of him?”
Mule Wang shook his head. He continued shoveling in his noodles, laughing and chewing as he talked. “Men say that a scholar’s name will last five years, an artist’s for ten, and a swordsman’s for twenty years of men. But how long do they remember a mule driver’s? Not at all. But do I care? Not with a full belly, no!”
Shulien gave another brief smile and looked away, toward the mountains, thinking of the man her father had chosen to be her husband.
Silent Wolf was lean and hard as his name suggested: a sharp face with narrow eyes, his long hair pulled into a knot at the back of his head. He had a brooding air, an intense stare, and an odd habit of breaking into laughter like sunlight suddenly emerging over a winter landscape. He had been a fine warrior, but she had not wanted to marry. Marrying would have meant giving up the Iron Way. As long as she was a wushu warrior she was a man in all but name. More than a man, indeed.
She had refused marriage until she had seen him fight. Then she had gone to her father and bowed before him. “Thank you, Father. I know you are thinking of my happiness. I refused to marry him at first, but now I have seen him I understand that you have chosen a man who will be good to me, and treat me fairly, and that is more than most of us can hope for in this world.”
Her father had smiled. “I want nothing more than your happiness. I hope for nothing greater than that you should live safely, and prosperously, and be blessed with many years and many children.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Father.”
But before the date could be set for the wedding, Silent Wolf had fallen foul of a corrupt official and fled into hiding, and in the months that followed she had met Mubai. Young hearts heal soonest, old women said, and Shulien had seen Mubai and she had been unable to speak in his presence, such were her feelings for him. She feared love then and turned to leave. But she could not help herself, risking one last glimpse, and then she saw that his gaze had followed her. Their eyes met, and she looked quickly away, cheeks coloring.
Fate had played tricks on her, it seemed. Her father would not let her marry another man. Mubai could not bear to see her and not touch her, and Shulien did not know where Silent Wolf had gone.
Mubai had come for one last meeting, and they had sat together, holding hands, as chaste as Buddhist nuns and monks. “I cannot be here and not hold you,” he said.
She bowed her head. She understood. Love was not a joy when it was a barrier between them, when their affections remained secret.
“You will go then?”
He had nodded. She had let him walk from her courtyard. It was autumn. It was the time that the cicadas were falling from the trees, their summer song ended. She sat alone, listening to the last cicada singing, and understood what it meant to be alone in the world.
Mubai had journeyed far in search of consolation, and found a friend in his travels, a stern, silent man, much his own age, and they had fallen in together and become oath brothers. It was only then that they opened their hearts to one another, and he discovered that lean warrior was Silent Wolf.
“What fate is this!” Mubai had said. “That I have fallen in love with your betrothed. I will leave you both. I will travel to the end of the Empire and find death in the pursuit of some great adventure.”
Silent Wolf had said nothing. But he saw that he was the thing that stood between Mubai and the woman he loved most and his eyes had narrowed. “If she loves you, then I should be the one to leave.”
“No,” Mubai said. “You were chosen by her father to be her betrothed.”
“The father picked me. The girl picked you. I know who I would want, if I were Shulien. If I died you could marry her,” he said.
“Do not even speak of such a thing,” Mubai had said. “You are as dear to me as she is. I could not bear to lose you, just as I have lost her. She is betrothed to you. You should marry her. She is a girl with a great heart. She will make you a fine wife.”
Silent Wolf had nodded slowly and poured them both wine. “To the beauty, Shulien,” they had toasted, and then each had gone on their way.
All this Shulien had learned much later, from Mubai. “Not long after, Silent Wolf sought to defeat a mad priest named Hades Dai,” Mubai had told her. “He was terrorizing the locals and even the city magistrate feared him so much that they did what he said. The law of the Emperor was overturned. This man was the Emperor in all but name. Silent Wolf saw that this could not be allowed to continue. Where justice fails, then the sword must intervene. He took his sword and bow and met Hades Dai on Vulture Peak. But the priest tricked him, and he had hidden warriors there to help him.”
It was here, on Vulture Peak, that Hades Dai had killed Silent Wolf.
As Shulien watched Mule Wang fill his belly she remembered the time Mubai brought Silent Wolf’s broken sword to her.
“I could not save him,” he’d said. Mubai had knelt before her and her soul had been torn in two.
Even as he had said this, hope had leaped inside her. But he ha
d shaken his head.
“I said I could not marry you, and I must keep to my word.”
“It was not your decision to make,” she had told him. “I am not chattel to be bought and sold at the market for a string of coins.” But he had refused her touch, though he could not resist coming in from his wandering, and sitting by her side, and bathing in her presence, as the old are brought out on a sunny day to soak up the warmth.
So the years passed. Shulien took over her father’s business escorting men through the wilds. She grew prosperous. Well respected. Loved by many for her honesty and steadfastness in the face of corrupt government officials.
“Shulien,” Mubai had said one day, “I have something to say.”
She gave him a look. “Speak.”
He had stammered then, and his cheeks had colored, just like that first time they had seen each other, and she knew immediately what he was going to say, and she found herself feeling deeply sad.
“I wander through the world, alone, fighting dishonest men. I meditate in the mountains, and yet something keeps calling me back to the world. Well, someone . . .” His eyes looked to her for help, but she resented the years alone, and as he spoke, she had refused to help him. Her eyes were hard and set, and she looked at him and did not give him a hint of her feelings.
“Do you feel this way?” he asked.
She shook her head. The thought of accepting his love had frightened her. “What can we offer each other?” she had said. “We are two warriors, next week we could both be dead.”
“More reason to accept our fate,” Mubai had said.
“I wish I could,” she said and put a hand to his arm. “But please don’t ask me again.”
Mubai had nodded and obeyed her request, even when she wished—yearned—for him to break his word. And by the time he died it was too late for her to change her mind.
All these thoughts came back to her as she sat with Mule Wang, under Vulture Peak, and the wind blew sparks off toward the stars. She remembered holding the shards of Silent Wolf’s sword in her hand.
