E. Hoffmann Price's Exotic Adventures

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “You will win, and I can follow you back into Ming Tien,” he said, hopefully, “and your victory will make a lucky funeral for my Venerable Ancestor.”

  Ah Sam now looked very much like a serious farmer, and not at all like a tiger. “No, old man, when they come to get us, others of our men will come out of the east, to hit them where they do not expect it.”

  Li-cheng, who understood nothing of war, cackled gleefully, and thought that he now understood grandfather’s laughter.

  “All the Japs dead, and I go to Ming Tien to wait for the next lucky day. And you will come to the banquet. Maybe I can find a duck to roast, even a pig.”

  “This will be an eating of men, and not many of those you see will fight again. Ming Tien will not be taken. It cannot be. We are too few, and so are those who strike from the east. We will kill many Japs, and so will they. And so will others after us, and in a year, there will be fewer Japs, and in five years, still fewer, and perhaps in twenty years, there will be none of them left, and many of our people left.”

  And so Li-cheng began to understand war.

  “Go away, old man, and wait.”

  “Twenty years?” Li-cheng said, wearily. “I cannot.”

  “I mean,” the patient guerilla explained, “in a few weeks, maybe a month, they will be far beyond Ming Tien, and then you can go back to town.”

  A man came running. Ah Sam turned to him. There was a shout, a shot, far down the slope. Rifles and machine guns opened up. Men darted from cover to cover. The skirmish developed. Grenades roared, mortars coughed, bombs rumbled; flame geysered up, and fragmentation whined and screamed and whistled. The shifting wind carried both the nitrous reek of modern cartridges and the sulphur stench of black powder. Men with long swords, men with spears, men with scythes raced here and there, at a crouch, ducking, halting, bounding up again when bombs and musketry covered their advance.

  The Japs, fighting it out, from trench to trench, from dike to dike, plugged grimly toward the uncultivated upper slopes. Far off, others were racing to their support. Artillery began to pound and blast the ridge, to pocket the guerillas. Light tanks picked their way over dried fields. Some burst into flame as bottles of gasoline were smashed against their ports.

  Li-cheng, in his first battle, had not even a weapon to steady him. The confusion was wilder than anything in his bouts with fever. Grandfather was talking, and the voices of Dragons became clear above the roar and rumble. “You are too old to go back to California…stay here, Li-cheng, when the Japs are gone, get the money you hid under the wall of the inn and buy the land Grandfather Yang used to own, and if you do not hear Heaven speak, at least you will see the four seasons and their regular coming.”

  In the bitter moonlight, he saw the upturned faces of guerillas with whom he had been working; young men, middle-aged men, boys. Others were sprawled in the shallow trenches. Some still moved. Some were half buried by shell blasts. He did not know which way to go, or what to do, but the voices of Dragons had spoken truth, and Li-cheng was resigned to seeing no more of Stockton, no more of the children and grandchildren who thought him backward for knowing only a few words of the language they spoke so glibly.

  These guerillas with whom he had eaten rice, they would lie where they dropped, and their descendants would not find them, nor give them rites, nor blazon their names on ancestral tablets. Far off, he heard the roar and saw the flame of battle, beyond Ming Tien, and it made this skirmish seem like the fire-crackers he had hoped to set off at grandfather’s funeral. Ah Sam, offering himself and his men as bait for the enemy, was in that distant attack getting rites as no Chinese farmer had ever got from his descendants.

  Having done their best, having taken the worst, the surviving guerillas retreated, skillfully, one group covering the other; and the Japs, having come with a sledge-hammer to drive a tack, charged up the slope.

  “Get out, old man!” Ah Sam yelled; and then, to all within earshot, “Every man for himself!”

  Li-cheng was beyond terror. There was not enough of him to register all that he had endured. He and grandfather were in a world of fever, noise, and voices, a heat that fried the brain, and a chill that made the teeth chatter. He saw Ah Sam spin, and pitch, and drop from sight. He saw bayonet-armed men blend with groups, plying long swords. Not able to run, Li-cheng moved slowly, no matter where.

  He stumbled. The bones rattled. He knew now why Ah Sam had vanished: a trench had swallowed him, a guerilla grave. And now the fullness of understanding came on Li-cheng. There was no better ritual than this, nor any ground more suitable. He struggled clear of the pack. He let the jar slide down the parapet, to rest among men who, though they still breathed, would not ever get up out of the earth of China.

  He knew now that grandfather, foreseeing everything, had selected this spot, so he knelt, and filled his hands with earth and dropped it down on the jar, and on those others who had returned their bones to China. His work was complete.

  Li-cheng, not able to understand what grandfather was saying, tried to hear, so that he was not aware that three Japs, darting upgrade, came upon him. An eager yell. They jostled each other. Their bayonets bit home, and the force of the thrust drove Li-cheng to the edge. When they twisted their blades clear, and hurdled the trench, Li-cheng thumped against the jar, and his hand touched the wet face of a man who lay near by.

  Chunks of dirt slid down, falling on Li-cheng, but he felt them no more than he did his wounds, for what consciousness he still had was centered on what his comrades were saying: “It makes no difference that none of your children are here to bury you, for you have brought your bones back to the earth of Han, and the earth is our ancestor.”

  DRAGON’S DAUGHTER

  Originally published in Witchcraft & Sorcery #6, May 1971.

  CHAPTER 1

  The singsong girl’s fingers danced and rippled. Her left hand crept along the neck of the lute, advancing, retreating. The strings laughed and sang; they wailed, and sighed, and murmured. As Li Fong savored her loveliness, he recalled what a poet had said, a thousand years ago, about the girl next door…too tall, if an inch were added to her height…too short, if half that much were taken away…another puff of powder and she’d be too pale…another touch of rouge would be too much…

  Stilling the voice of the lute, she handed it to him. Its four strings were stretched over ivory frets. The body, shaped like a pear split lengthwise, was of teak. The sounding board was of wutun wood, all inlaid with mother of pearl.

  “Tajen, you play?”

  As he plucked the strings, Li Fong recited lines snatched at random from Po Chu Yi’s poem in honor of the lute:

  “Loud as the crash of pelting rain

  Soft as the murmur of whispered words

  Frail as the patter of pearls

  Poured on a plate of jade”

  Li Fong gestured. Before he could fairly say, “Another cup!” she was pouring from the bronze jug. And he said, “You sang of the Uttermost West, of the Mountain of the Gods, and the Dragon Lords. Sing more! Tell more!” So the evening carried on, as such evenings will. Nothing was over looked. Not even that hour of whispered planning, after his promise to buy up her contract and take her home to be his concubine.

  Nothing for Li Fong to do but pass the examinations, and be appointed to a post in the Imperial Civil Service. And of course, give presents to various eunuchs and other important persons at the court of the Son of Heaven.

  Another jug of wine would not cut too deeply into the gold reserved for such gifts, nor into the silver for living expenses and tuition, the final cramming before the examination.

  When Hwa Lan realized that Li Fong actually meant what he was saying, she countered, whimsically. “There is a better way for us, Old Master! We’ll go to the Taoist magician and learn their art. Then we’ll ride the wind, we’ll go to the Mountain of the Gods, and we’ll kowtow to the Dragon l
ords—we’ll plead for their help! Otherwise aiieeeyah! How unpleased your Venerable Father will be when you start with a sing-song girl—when he’s most certainly got a wife picked out for you!”

  Hwa Lan was practical. Li Fong and the wine were not. So, she sang of the Dragon Lady who lived in the Great Desert…or, atop the Mountain.

  At dawn, Li Fong awakened with the city. Considering how massively drunk he had been before Hwa Lan crumpled across her lute and toppled into bed he felt fine. Seeing her lying there, beyond the half drawn curtains of her alcove, he wondered what had happened. She’d been sparing enough, and had been urging him to drink less wine.

  Something odd about her breathing. Hwa Lan still wore her jade hair pins. She still wore everything.

  The bronze jar was empty. On the table was a small porcelain jug. Two matching cups. One empty. He reached for the other. He recognized the smell of that drug from Hindustan.

  He had been so drunk that he had escaped being doped. And, so drunk that robbing him had required no fancy work whatever. Instead of gray silk tunic and black trousers, and embroidered boots and embroidered cap, he wore coolie clothes, ragged and grimy.

  He was sure that Hwa Lan had had no part in this.

  Storming through the wine shop, demanding his clothes and his money had landed him in jail. He did not look like the sort of person who would be admitted as a patron.

  That was the wrong day to be in jail. A recruiting party took charge of every prisoner who could walk, gave the jailer a present, and collected a bounty of one silver tael per new soldier, when the detachment arrived at the military commander’s yamen.

  That is how it had started.

  The Son of Heaven required a lot of soldiers to fight the Uighur Turki barbarian of the Uttermost West. And now, well over two thousand miles from that fatal wine shop, Li Fong was seeing the glamour-lands of which Hwa Lan had sung. Six months of long marching and short rations brought out the difference between song and fact…

  The mountains, even from a great distance, loomed up as monstrous fantasies. More and more, they brought to mind Hwa Lan’s music and words. He persisted in his belief, in what he had come to regard as knowledge, that Hwa Lan had played no part in robbing him. His other fixed belief, a growing conviction, no more rational than the first, was that someone spoke to him, usually during his sleep, but at times by day, as he plodded, hour after hour, licking the windblown loess dust from his lips, squinting through the yellow haze and at the sky-glare until waking and sleeping became ever more alike. Finally, he could not tell one from the other.

  Li Fong never ate all his ration of parched barley or beans. Always, he saved a bit, building up a supply. This added to his burden, but it lightened his spirit. Prompted by his invisible counselors, who persistently asserted that Hwa Lan had seen great adventure and ultimate victory for him, Li Fong was making plans.

  And the camel freighters were interesting fellows. They told of buried cities…of sands which spoke at night…and of the Gods who lived on several of the high mountain peaks.

  One night Li Fong stole a camel. This was a smooth escape, without a moment of suspense. Since no one could possibly be so insane as to desert, the sentries were far from vigilant. So, he put the army behind him and looked up at the stars he had come to know, during those long nights of sleeping on hard earth.

  “The Sieve now sparkles to the South

  And mostly ill drops through.

  Slowly, the Dipper tips and spills

  But pours no good for you…”

  The fact of it was that he recited those pessimistic lines to tone down the exultation which dizzied him.

  Wind driven sand whispered and rustled, a dry, thin sound. Flying creatures grazed his face as they swerved. Some were feathered, some were furry, and as to others, he had unpleasant surmises.

  The bats betokened a mine somewhere. But, how far… Outbound bats, not homeward faring…not at this hour…

  Shortly before dawn, he came upon masonry rising a few feet above the drifted sand. There were stunted poplars. Li Fong halted at the ruin. He found a moist spot, as he had anticipated. He scraped and dug with his sword. Soon a brackish pool accumulated in the basin. After drinking, he crawled to the lee of the cornice of a deeply buried building. The drift was a softness such as he had not known for many a week.

  Blazing sun awakened Li Fong.

  Hobbling a camel so that the beast would remain hobbled was not one of Li Fong’s skills. He was alone and afoot.

  Li Fong shouldered his gear and made for the mountains.

  By night, the mountains wore coronets of stars, and crowns of snow. By day, mirage made them dance and weave. Several times, when hunger and thirst and weariness would have kept him from getting up when he lurched and fell, voices urged him on. He found water, and grubbed roots. He ate the seeds from pods. Once, he found the eggs of a wild bird. Several times, he sword-speared a lizard. When he quit the desert and could distinguish trees on the mountain’s upper slopes, Li Fong still had a handful of parched barley in his pack.

  Li Fong propped himself upright, with staff of acacia. He tilted his head far back, and stared until finally he could believe that what he saw, so far up, was summit and snow cap, not clouds.

  “Omito fu! The Mountain of the Gods!”

  Water now, and pine nuts. Sometimes at the rim of a pool, he found lily roots. The air became thin and crisp. Mists billowed.

  With flint and steel, he would make fire of an evening. Sometimes there were herbs which he simmered, making soup. He had long forgotten hunger, since he could not recall when he had last eaten other than famine-fare.

  So, that sunset, with its slanting lances of red and gold reaching through the branches, when he saw a strange bird approaching him, he regarded it as beauty, rather than as food walking to his fire.

  No doubt at all that he could throw the staff and clip the approaching fowl, but this possibility did not interest him.

  The bird came without fear. In its gold-flecked eyes was a glint as of intelligence as well as curiosity. Tawny-buff and gold, white and scarlet plumage, with a triple crest and metallically gleaming beak, it seemed to be the origin of all the pheasant-kind, all the more so since the color scheme shifted until no variety had been omitted. This, however, was much larger than any pheasant, although to judge size was absurd. The trees, the escarpments which swooped skyward—all about Li Fong was gigantic. Nevertheless, the bird must be larger than a peacock.

  It paced somewhat like a quail, flashing quick paces, yet progressing deliberately, always level, as though skimming the surface. This was a curious, a cadenced pacing.

  The bird halted, regarding him, the haggard, the sun-seared, the ragged, and the dried-out. The beautiful and the devastated regarded each other, with interest ever increasing and compelling.

  The lances of sunlight shifted.

  A vast shadow enveloped Li Fong and the iridescent bird. The shadow was that of wings, tremendously outreaching. This was not the shadow of any cloud. The bird’s eyes gleamed pointedly. The wings flickered. The tail fanned, the feet moved, a pacing which brought the bird no nearer Li Fong. It was as though this creature perceived, and knew something which Li Fong did not.

  Then he understood. He recalled Old Master Wong, the calligrapher, who would close his eyes and with a single unbroken motion, brush never quitting the paper, shape four characters, the final ending in an exquisite long prolongation stroke.

  “Soaring Dragon: Dancing Phoenix.”

  He spoke the words aloud.

  There was a blur of gold and red and apricot and persimmon. The shadow shifted and wheeled. Glancing up, Li Fong caught the glint of scales, the gleam of claws. Looking back, he saw neither shadow nor bird.

  He saw only a black-robed man who wore a Taoist hat. The man’s white beard trailed to his waist. His face had scarcely a line, yet if h
e had declared himself to be a thousand years old, Li Fong could have believed him. The eyes half-glinted with humor, yet were half-stern, and entirely penetrating beyond the glance of ordinary men.

  Once and a second time, Li Fong touched his forehead to the pine needles. Before he could kowtow a third time, the man helped him to his feet.

  “Perhaps you should stay here—perhaps it is better for you to go far from here. But first, you will rest and eat. It is very interesting that you thought of Soaring Dragon: Dancing Phoenix, instead of roasted fowl.”

  CHAPTER II.

  Li Fong followed the tao shih along a path which presently led to a monastery of brick and masonry. It nestled cozily on a shelf of rock which seemed to have an overlay of soil sufficient for a small group of monks, provided they were not hearty eaters.

  As though sensing Li Fong’s thought, the tao shih paused at the entrance. “What you do not know about farming, I will show you. I am Tai Ching, disciple of Master Ko Hung.”

  Li Fong put his palms together, bowed three times, gave his own name, and begged leave to abstain from stating his surname.

  Master Ko Hung’s life had ended three centuries ago. Whether Tai Ching meant that he had actually been one of the alchemist-magician’s pupils, or merely that he had devoted his life to studying the Pao P’o Tzu, the Master’s final book, was an open question. In any event, Tai Ching undoubtedly knew, from long ago, all the reasons which might make a man wish to conceal his surname.

  Li Fong followed the tao shih across a well-kept courtyard. He paused long enough to scrape a bit of barley from his haversack, and put the grains on the altar of the shrine, just beyond the entrance. Having paid his respect to the Gods, the Immortals, and the Buddhas, he resumed his way, until Tai Ching gestured to an alcove in which spring water accumulated in a wall-basin.

  “You may wash. Then follow food-smell to the refectory.”