by Zoe Marriott
Never would I laugh at ghost stories again.
General Wu signalled to Sigong. “We’ve a lot of ground to cover today, Captain. Let’s set a fast clip, please!”
The bamboo forest that bounded the Stone Forest was a farmed one, maintained over the steeply sloping ground by villagers who also, luckily for us, ensured the roads were in good condition. We achieved a pace that put a satisfied look even on the Young General’s face, moving through the soothing green ranks of trees with a speed born, I thought, of both relief and a strong desire to put the day before behind us. A mood of good cheer hung over the columns of soldiers, and Sigong wisely encouraged it.
Tall tales of heroic adventure, battle prowess or romantic conquest began to circulate among the senior officers. Sigong enraptured the company by relating the time when, he claimed, he had glimpsed Dou Xianniang herself in the flesh, despite the fact that if she still lived she would have been over a hundred years old. And that was if one conceded that she had ever really existed at all.
According to Sigong, everything in the stories was true. The honourable lady outlaw was a wild beauty with flying raven hair, scarlet-lacquered armour and a sword that flashed quick as lightning.
“I swear to you I’m not lying!” the normally laconic man protested, laughing at his own vehemence. “On the life of my favourite wife, I swear it! It was her. She ran those rebels through as if their bodies were paper, and dragged the children from the burning house with her own hands! I was as close to her as you are to me now.”
“And did she give you a kiss – or more – for good luck, too?” someone mocked good-naturedly.
“No,” Sigong admitted through a chorus of hoots and catcalls. “Although I would have been in fear for my life if she had. She had eyes like a wild creature – like a tigress at bay. Feral! She’d have taken a bite out of me.”
“Coward!” General Wu chided affably. His eyes had lit up like a boy’s when Sigong began the story. “It would be worth it to die at the hands of such a woman.”
“Yes, you’d have died smiling!” another officer shouted, making an obscene gesture.
By mid-morning we were all joining in when some of the men broke out in a very old and very bawdy marching song.
“Helps them keep time,” Wu Jiang told me with a faintly sheepish grin.
I smiled back, glad to see him in better spirits, even if the song did make my cheeks burn.
Ahead of us, the front ranks of infantry broke through the last of the trees, sunlight flashing from their helms and the rims of their shields. Almost at once, their light-hearted singing dissolved into shocked cries. I heard the sergeant in charge call out a halt and then shout for Captain Sigong and General Wu.
Sigong quickly turned back to pass the order for a full stop to the columns behind us. Wu Jiang was already kicking his bay mount forward into a trot. I followed, stomach cramping with apprehension.
What I saw as I left the shady green cave of trees was both better and worse than I had feared.
No company of Leopard fighters aimed cannon at us from the forest, and the pale road that wound around the hillside ahead was clear.
Instead, at the base of the terraced green valley below, surrounded by the glimmer of rice fields, I beheld a small farming settlement. A few dozen families, perhaps. Almost certainly the same farmers who had planted and harvested this forest, and maintained this road.
They would do so no longer. There was nothing left but blackened ruins.
The Leopard had been here before us.
Wu Jiang drew in a deep breath through his nose. His jaw worked as he turned in his saddle to look at Sigong, who had reined his horse in beside ours.
“No smoke still rising, no taste of ash on the air,” Sigong commented, matter-of-fact. “Those fires have gone cold. This is a few days old at least. Just an unhappy coincidence.”
“More a sign of how bad things are becoming,” General Wu said heavily. “If we hadn’t happened on this road, it might have been days more, even weeks, before anyone realized what happened here. And there are most likely dozens more the same, scattered up and down the empire.”
“Orders, sir?” I prompted when he fell silent, and seemed disinclined to say more.
The bay horse jinked restlessly beneath him – the only sign of his internal disquiet. “We must investigate. The war office and the emperor will expect reports. And we owe it to these people to bury their remains, make the proper offerings.”
It was quickly arranged for the main body of the battalion to break on the road, and keep watch. The last thing any of us wanted after the ambush on the camp was to be caught off-guard again. Wu Jiang picked out nine men – plus his two bodyguards, me and, strangely, one of our precious doctors – to enter the ruins. It wasn’t usual to bring a surgeon along unless…
“Nothing is moving down there, sir,” I said tentatively. “Do you really think we’ll find survivors?”
Wu pressed his lips into a remarkably humourless smile. “Unlikely. But having a doctor present is often useful. Besides, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that someone could have escaped. They may emerge when they see the empire’s colours.”
Soon we were ready to leave the battalion and the road behind, descending on to a narrower, but still dry and well looked-after trail down to the base of the hill. The sight of the blackened, gaping buildings was disturbing, but as we came closer, I found the worst thing was the quiet. I compared the stillness to what I should have heard: dogs barking to announce intruders, the lowing of cattle and the clucking of fowl, followed by screaming, excited children running out to pet the horses, and their parents yelling at them in turn…
Insects chirruped in the wild grasses of the verge, and in the rice fields, frogs croaked. Somewhere above, a carrion bird coughed.
I shivered. This felt as haunted a place, in its own way, as the Stone Forest.
“We’ll split into three groups,” Wu Jiang said. “Check each building carefully and note the number of bodies or the possibility of survivors. Hua Zhi, you’re with me.”
We left our horses tethered to a miraculously intact rail at the edge of the village. General Wu’s two bodyguard-outriders took on the task of entering the burned ruins and reporting what they had seen. The Young General opted to appease them by staying away from the possible danger of collapsing floors and walls, and I perforce remained with him, pressing notes on to a wax tablet.
The small houses here had been wood-walled and grass-roofed. The fire had devoured the humble dwellings hungrily, leaving many so gutted that only a few beams and the odd wall still stood. It was necessary to poke through piles of ash and debris to look for human remains. The devastation was stark. But … there were no bodies.
“Where are they?” I murmured, hardly aware that I spoke aloud. In the distance, back at the centre of the village, I could see one of the other groups – the one with the doctor – still scratching through the wreckage. “Even if we assume some escaped, or that the Leopard took some as slaves, this fire was out of control. Most of these people must have died here. Where are their bodies?”
“Maybe the Leopard took them all for slaves, and only then burned the place,” one of Wu Jiang’s guards suggested. Since they never acknowledged my existence if they could help it, I took this as proof that they found the lack of remains as unsettling as I did.
Wu Jiang said nothing.
“General.” The doctor was approaching, the soldiers from his group behind him. All of them were a little out of breath. “We found evidence in the town square that the rebels stayed here for several days after the attack. We believe they were … feasting.”
There was a sick significance to that word. My stomach cramped again, and the feeling only intensified when the doctor offered some slender, yellowed sticks to the Young General. He took them without hesitation, but his shoulders were tense, his head drawn down towards his chest.
“So small,” he muttered.
“No mor
e than three years old, I would have said.” The doctor’s usually impassive face twitched. “You can see the teeth marks.”
My stomach heaved and I breathed out, slowly, through my mouth. The sticks were a baby’s bones. And they had been gnawed on. Not by fangs – not by animals. But by humans.
“There are also signs that they corralled the cattle, pigs and so on, and took them when they left.”
“To sell or eat later,” Wu Jiang said, utterly blank. “Easier to transport than human livestock.”
“Sir,” one of the bodyguards broke in, ashen-faced. “Are – are you saying that they kept the cattle alive – and – and ate the people?”
“That’s how he came to be called the Leopard,” the doctor said, when Wu Jiang failed to respond. “It’s said leopards hunt men sometimes, in the mountains. Once the beasts have tasted human flesh, they become man-eaters for life.”
The guard took two hasty steps away and went down on his knees, dry-heaving. The other guard averted his gaze, as if ashamed at his fellow’s weakness. Personally, I was entirely in sympathy with the man. I might have joined him – except that just then General Wu’s large hands tightened around the small bundle of bones. One cracked in his hand, a dry, pathetic little noise. With a look of sudden horror, he dropped them.
“General Wu?” I approached cautiously, stowing my papers and writing equipment in the canvas sack slung around my chest. “Sir, are you well?”
“What a waste,” he said softly, staring down at the fragile, broken little bones lying in the dust at his feet. “This – this should never have happened. What a stupid, damned waste.”
He blinked, swallowed – the same trick he had taught me in the stockade – then jerked his head. “You’re dismissed.”
It took me a couple of puzzled seconds to work out that he meant not just me, but all of us. I opened my mouth to protest. It wasn’t safe for him to be alone, not in unsecured territory. The guard who had been sick got in first, stumbling back to his feet.
“General Wu, no – our orders—”
“I don’t care,” Wu Jiang said through gritted teeth. “Leave me. Now.”
Still, we hesitated, thrown by the disregard for protocol or, in my case, his uncharacteristic display of emotion. The doctor moved closer and began in soothing tones, “Now, now, sir—”
Wu Jiang snarled, furious. “I said leave me!”
Well. That was quite clear. I saluted sharply, then turned away. Behind me, I heard the others reluctantly following suit. I felt a little guilty for being the first to give in, but I was equally anxious that my own stomach might revolt at any time – a cold sweat had broken out on my brow and upper lip and my vision had gone a little blurry at the edges. Shock, I thought distantly. I’d really … rather be alone, just now. Wu Jiang deserved the same courtesy.
I wandered away from the others aimlessly. General Wu might have ordered us from his presence but he hadn’t sent us off duty, which meant I needed to stay within hearing distance of his bellow. I left Yulong where he was, after a quick check on his comfort, and then decided to head downhill, following the road to the rice fields. A small stream ran almost alongside it, most likely artificial, dug to water those same fields, and my canteen was nearly empty.
I scrambled down the shallow, grassy bank and crouched by the water, listening to the peaceful splash and ripple of its movements with relief. It was a sound which I had always associated with tranquillity and wellness. I closed my eyes and breathed in the green, earthy smells, appreciating the warmth of the sun on the backs of my hands and scalp, the fact that I was alive and well and still able to enjoy such things.
My qi gradually calmed. My stomach stopped trying to heave. I sighed. A general, or even his fancy handpicked bodyguard from the city, might be allowed some show of great emotion at such destruction as this. They had nothing to prove. But the rest of us, unless we wished to be labelled cowards, or worse, girls – How I despise that stupid insult! – needed to at least attempt to remain stoic.
Who were these … these monsters that we were fighting? Could they really be mere mortal men, like the rest of us, if they were capable of such acts? This place had held no strategic importance, contained no great wealth or influential people. It had simply been here. And they had destroyed it, and everyone within it, and consumed them.
Just because.
The Leopard must truly be as depraved as the stories said. Nothing else could explain this. And yet he was … not winning, surely not – but holding his own against the very best our empire had to offer. Three years after he first reappeared, he was still running unchecked through the countryside enacting such obscene violence. No one could catch him. No one could stop him.
What if such a man were to win? What if he were to take the Dragon Throne?
What would become of us then?
Slowly and deliberately, I refilled my canteen, marvelling at the crystal purity of the water, the slow-moving silver flashes of the carp, and the jewel-like smoothness of the river stones that made up the water’s bed. It was safer to think of such simple, lovely things just now. Tormenting myself was a waste of time, a waste of this, the first snatch of true privacy I’d had in weeks.
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than I saw the house.
It lay on the other side of the stream, set a good way back from the road and the water, in the shadow of the hill, and sheltered by a thick bank of trees. From here it appeared undisturbed – a small but surprisingly gracious dwelling, with expensive green clay tiles on the roof and what appeared to be a pocket-sized ornamental garden flourishing outside the front door.
The home of a local official or dignitary, perhaps a poet or a scholar, a person of some little wealth who had chosen this idyllic, isolated spot to hide away.
As I leapt across the narrow waterway, I felt a faint glimmer of hope. The little house was untouched by fire, secluded from the rest of the village. Perhaps the Leopard’s men had missed it. Perhaps the people were hiding. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps here I would find that single precious survivor of this massacre that the Young General had dared to imagine.
But when I reached the end of the short, paved pathway to the red-painted door, I found it unlocked. A bad sign. Inside, the receiving hall showed evidence of disturbance: a teacup knocked over, the now cold beverage allowed to drip from the table to the faded but lovely rug beneath.
A little deeper inside, and I saw scuffmarks on the polished wooden floor, as if someone or something had been dragged. There was a small splash of blood, dried to black. And there was a smell, growing with each step. An unmistakable smell.
I breathed through my mouth, and pressed on.
In a small room that reminded me irresistibly of my father’s study – dim, book-lined and comfortably shabby – I found the people who had lived there.
Eighteen
slammed the screen closed, gagging on the cloying, fetid stench of death. I staggered away, only realizing as I collided with the wall that my eyes had snapped shut. But it was no use. What I had seen was in my head now. I could still see it. I would always see it.
A man, middle-aged and dressed in clothes that were of fine quality, but well worn. A woman of around the same age. Probably his wife. A boy, lanky and only half grown – in his mid-teens. Their son, most likely. And a man in spotted armour. All dead. All dead, together, and already beginning, oh ancestors, beginning to bloat…
The middle-aged man’s throat had been cut. His blood had spilled over his desk as his body slumped over his papers. His wife – maybe she had tried to help her husband, or get away, but the Leopard’s man caught her. The bruises on her throat and wrists, her thighs, the way her fine gown had been ripped and left rucked up… There in the same room where her husband lay dead…
Perhaps her son had been somewhere else in the house and heard the screams? Something had brought him into the room. But he was only a boy. Only a boy.
I thought the mother had tried to fight, to
protect him. There … there had been a bloodied paper knife clutched in her hand. But in the end it didn’t matter. They all died there. Murdered and murderer. Rotting together.
I raged for them, as I stumbled from that room of death. I raged for her. This woman, this mother, this stranger. For all she had been forced to do and see, and endure, and at the useless, meaningless way it had ended. We would have helped them. We should have helped them. Now they were all beyond anyone’s help.
I heard the echo of my mother’s voice crying out to me in the Stone Forest last night, and shuddered. Too late.
Light fell across my face. I opened my eyes, and found myself at the open doorway of another room. A weaving room. Smaller than the one in my home, but in every way familiar and ordinary and reassuring. Two looms, both strung with kesi tapestries – one complete, one unfinished – occupied the majority of the space. A beautiful thread box, inlaid with peonies in mother-of-pearl and shell, lay open as if in invitation, skeins of coloured silk neatly arranged and ready to be used.
A screen door to the ornamental garden outside was slightly open, and there were large, dusty boot prints on the otherwise carefully swept floor. This was how the murderer had crept in. The room was untouched by the chaos and violence beyond. The only trace of what had happened to its owner was the dust.
The rage inside me stilled – not dissipated but suddenly contained. As if in a trance I entered and sat before the larger loom. The incomplete tapestry was beautiful. A round panel with three vivid blue-and-copper flycatcher birds picking red berries from a branch. The edges featured bamboo leaves and peach blossoms, symbolizing long life and an upright character. Flycatcher birds might refer to an administrative rank in the court that could be obtained with favourable civil service examination results.
My breath caught in my throat. She had been making this for her son. A piece of art that symbolized all a mother’s hopes for her child and his future…
Only a few places remained to be completed on the tapestry – mostly on the decorative edge.
